


i want to ki_ _ you* (answers may vary)

by topangamatthews



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Secret Relationship, all smushed together bc i have no self control, literally just a bunch of tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-02-28 12:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 80,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13271337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topangamatthews/pseuds/topangamatthews
Summary: Mike Wheeler hated El Hopper since the first day he met her. For El Hopper, the feeling was mutual, much to the disdain of their shared friends. So why are they the only ones on each other’s minds?(An AU in which Mike and El learn that there’s a thin line between hate and love)





	1. as shakespeare once probably said, "fuck you"

Mike Wheeler hated El Hopper since the day he met her.

It was the first day back to school from winter break, the cold January air instantly making him more awake than he wanted to be. If it had been up to him, he would have stayed under the warm covers of his bed all day, reading the new comic books he’d gotten as Christmas presents. Instead, he was rushing to class, trying to make it into his seat on time before the final bell.

He ran to his locker, quickly putting in his combination and trying to juggle all of the notebooks in his hands to get the right ones. Just as he was closing the locker up and turning away to make a dash towards the classroom across the hall, he felt something, someone, crash into him.

“Jesus,” he yelled, some of his papers flying away from him. “I’m so sorry.”

He reached down to pick up what he had dropped and only then did he see who he had ran right into. He had never seen her before, but  _god_ , he wished he had. A girl with curly brown hair that fell right into her face and the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen was currently wide eyed and staring down at him. Mike stared back and before he even had the chance to stand back up and ask if she was okay, she walked quickly past him, leaving him alone.

“You probably freaked her out, idiot,” he murmured to himself, taking a much slower pace as he started walking again to his homeroom class. 

For the rest of day, he kept looking around the hallways and classrooms, hoping to catch a glimpse of her brown curls or pale blue sweater so that he could go up to talk to her. Even though, it had been pretty obvious she didn’t want to talk to him. He remembered her gaze on him, the way she didn’t answer his question or say anything, just stared at him. Not that he minded, really. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and it had only been for a few seconds. He just needed to find her, to try and get her to talk to him.

Mike was lost in his thoughts when Dustin punched his arm.

“Holy shit,” he yelled, causing Lucas and Will to also look up from where they were all seated at their regular lunch table. “Who is that with Max?!”

Mike looked over to where Dustin was staring and sure enough walking with Max, were the brown curls and pale blue sweater that he had been looking for again all morning. Max kept talking to her while they both walked towards their table, and the girl smiled and laughed as she listened to her, tucking a stray curl behind her ear while her other hand held her books.  _She’s so cute_ , Mike thought, before quickly forcing himself to stop and look away before she thought he was more of a weirdo than before.

“ ‘Sup guys,” Max asked, taking her usual seat next to Lucas and across from Mike, Dustin, and Will. She pushed Lucas over with her hip, trying to tell him to make room for the other girl to sit down next to her. “This is my new friend, El. We met today in homeroom. She’s new here.”

 _El_ , Mike smiled, thinking about how nicely the name fit her. The rest of the party waved and smiled at her, but Mike quickly realized that El was only staring at him, again not saying anything.

“Umm, El? Aren’t you going to sit down,” Max asked, patting the empty spot next to her. 

“I...I...,” she said looking away from Mike to look at Max. She blushed and then turned and walked away quickly, just as she had done to Mike in the morning. It left them all confused, Mike more stunned than anything.

“What did you do,” Max asked him accusingly.

“Me?! I didn’t even say anything to her,” he defended. 

“Obviously, you did because she was fine all day and all of a sudden, she meets you and she’s not.”

He was about to explain how he had ran into her, literally, in the morning and how she had walked away from him without saying anything, when Will spoke up.

“Maybe she was just nervous?”

“About  _Mike,_ ” Max asked incredulously, Mike flipping her off in response as she quickly returned the gesture.

“No, just about...boys in general,” Will offered as an explanation.

“Whatever,” Max said with an eye roll, taking some fries off of Lucas’s plate before standing up from the table. “I’m going to find El and see if she’s okay.”

Mike thought about what Will had suggested. Maybe he was right and she was just shy around guys. She hadn’t said anything to the rest of the guys, either. He wanted to believe that her issue was with boys in general, not him, specifically. Her and Max were friends now, apparently, which meant she would be in the party and hopefully warm up to them eventually.

After lunch, he found out that she was now in his English class. Even though she was in the far back corner and he was seated in the front and center of the class, he turned back to look at her and saw that she had been staring at him before turning away. It confused him, but maybe Will was right and she was nervous. He preferred that much more than the idea of her not liking him.

He had accepted Will’s hypothesis when at the end of the school day, he saw El talking to Lucas and Dustin. They were by a locker, hers apparently, and she was laughing along with them about something. Dustin and Lucas were talking over each other, but he saw her talk before the three began laughing at something again. As he walked towards the three of them, he saw her smile begin to fade, and his stomach clenched at the reaction.

“I gotta go,” she said, Mike hearing it right as she turned and walked away when he reached the group.

“What is her  _problem_ ,” Mike asked, the frustration clear in his voice. She seemed to like everyone besides him and other than accidentally running into her, which he had apologized for right away, he hadn’t said or done anything to her to make her not like him. 

“It seems like the problem is you, man,” Dustin shrugged.

“Yeah. We had her right now for history class, and she’s pretty cool,” Lucas added. 

That made Mike’s fists clench up, his frustration turning into anger at her. Why was she refusing to talk him? All she did was stare and walk away, and he didn’t  _get_  it.

“Well, fine,” Mike exclaimed. “If she doesn’t want to talk to me, then I won’t talk to her.”

As he walked away from his friends, the rational part of his brain was telling him he was ridiculous. She was new and he shouldn’t be offended if she wasn’t comfortable to talk to him, yet. But another part of his brain, the one that was making him so angry, decided that she was rude and probably self-centered, and he had every reason to be mad that she wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she was closing him off. 

Mike stayed up all that night thinking about her, about how pretty he had thought she was in the morning. About how he had practiced in his head what to say to her when he finally found her again. And about how all that had changed now. Because now he knew she was not as nice as she looked, at least not to him, which wasn’t fair because he hadn’t done anything. Now when he thought about her, his stomach didn’t flutter- it erupted, like a volcano ejecting lava and ash. It made him feel warm and angry and the thought of having to see her until the end of the school year infuriated him to no end.

He hated her.

He hated how she began to sit with him and his friends at lunch, at the opposite end of the table, and still ignored him, only ever looking at him, but never speaking to him directly. He hated how he always saw her looping arms with Max or laughing with Dustin or whispering with Will, but she still continued to never even smile at him. He hated how he heard other boys talk about her, about how pretty she was and how they wanted to ask her out, because couldn’t they realize how  _obnoxious_  she was? 

The most Mike ever heard her talk was towards the end of March when Dustin dragged him to help with the lights and sounds for the school musical. They were putting on  _The Wizard of Oz_ , and much to his surprise, El had been cast as Dorothy, after being convinced by Max to audition with her, he later learned. For at least once a week, he had to stay after school and listen to El complain and whine for hours on end about how her ruby slippers didn’t fit right or how she was unsure about a dance move or how a prop was breaking apart. Half of him wanted to reach over to the dial controlling her mic and turn her off completely. 

“You should be nicer to her,” Max told him, in her Glinda the Good Witch costume and fiddling around with her fairy wand while making light saber noises. 

“She should be nice to me,” Mike exclaimed. “She hated me first. She started it.”

“She does not hate you!” And then under her breath added, “Trust me.”

And he would have. He trusted Max more than other people because she never bullshitted anything. But then in his English class a few days later after their conversation, he was proven right. 

They were discussing  _Hamlet_ , more specifically the character of Ophelia, and as always Mike was one of the few students who was actually participating in class and answering the teacher’s discussion questions. She had asked for characteristics that described her and Mike had raised his hand, answering, “Beautiful, crazy, fragile.” 

The teacher, about to thank him, stopped with a questioning look on her face. 

“Yes, El,” she asked, causing everyone, including Mike, to look back at the small girl raising her hand. She never talked in class and seeing her ready to say something left them stunned.

“Mike is wrong,” she told the teacher bluntly, not looking at any of her classmates as they all let out teasing and whispers. 

“Excuse me,” Mike asked her, feeling his face burning up. And suddenly she did something she had never done before in his four months of knowing her: she looked at him and spoke to him directly.

“You’re wrong.”

 _You’re wrong_. Those were the first words she was going to choose to say him?! In front of everyone, who was now looking at the both of them and waiting for someone else to say something.

“Why am I wrong?”

“Because Ophelia isn’t fragile,” she said offended. “She is beautiful and she is crazy, but she’s also smart and brave. She was a victim of abuse and the patriarchy and mental illness. And yeah, she killed herself in the end, but she didn’t do it because she gave up or wasn’t strong, she did it because she knew if she continued to live she would have to continue to serve men and corrupt politics and continue to be mistreated for her psychosis. 

Act Two, Line 202: ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t’. Ophelia is strategic about her madness. She gives out flowers to Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes and she knows exactly what each flower means- marital infidelity, repentance, faithfulness. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She is suffering, has suffered probably more than anyone in the play, and she is the only one who has justified her death without losing sight of her courage...So don’t call her fragile.”

The whole class, even the teacher, stayed stunned at her rant, her voice having had picked up speed and volume until the end when she seemed to have reminded herself why she had begun her speech in the first place. Mike simply stared at her and she stared back until a student somewhere started clapping teasingly and everyone else started to join in, adding “You tell him, Hopper” and “Way to tell him off” to their cheers before their teacher quieted them down and tried to ask if anyone else had anything to add to that.

Mike and El continued to stare at each other, and Mike had never been able to read her eyes before, but he saw it then. She hated him.

He turned back around in his seat, face red and angry. 

 _Fine_ , he thought, _if she hates me then the feeling is mutual._

* * *

 

El Hopper didn’t hate Mike Wheeler. Not at first. Her feelings towards him in the beginning were the exact opposite. 

She remembered the day, the moment, she met him. Her dad had just left her at the administration office after registering her for classes, and had given her a quick hug wishing her luck and telling her to get to class right away. She’d only been living with Jim for three years, adopted for two, and while homeschooling had been nice, safe after years of mistreatment in her foster homes, she longed for other people. She longed for friends.

She took her school schedule, going out into the hallway to try and navigate her way to her first period class, looking down at the tiny print on the paper before she suddenly bumped into someone. 

“Jesus! I’m so sorry.”

And when she looked down at the person who had ran into her, she saw him. Black hair that almost fell into his eyes and curled at the ends, light freckles that scattered across his cheekbones, dark eyes that were almost quite literally leaving her breathless.  _Cute._  She knew cute boys existed, had seen them in movies and television shows, but she had never been so close to one.

Her pulse was starting to race and her stomach started to feel strange, and she just wanted to leave before she could do anything more embarrassing. So before she could stop herself, she began to walk away and made her way to the end of the hallway before turning into another one. A part of her felt a little bad, guilty that she hadn’t said anything to him, but another part of her decided that it would have been worse if she had. She had no idea how to talk to boys- especially cute ones that wore warm sweaters and made her palms start to sweat. 

When El finally found her first period classroom, she sat next to a pretty red headed girl who quickly introduced as Max. El found herself relaxing with girl, even though somewhere in the back of her mind she was still thinking about the boy she had briefly met. Max asked to see her schedule and when she found out that her class before lunchtime was right next to hers, she quickly invited her to join them.

“You just have to join my friends. I’m the only girl and I’ve been dealing with too much testosterone these past three years,” she told her, to which El laughed at and agreed to.

But when El met up with her and they began to walk together to the cafeteria, Max telling her all about how evil her science teacher was, her breath caught in her throat when she saw the boy. He was looking right at them, his eyes still as beautiful as she had seen them that morning, and she began to feel inexplicably nervous again. 

Her mind started racing,  _please don’t be Max’s friend, please don’t be Max’s friend, please don’t be_ \- but then Max stopped walking and sat down at his table. She swallowed, her vision going a bit blurry as she thought about how much this guy probably hated her for being so mean that morning. The last thing he wanted was for her to sit at his table. 

She vaguely heard Max asking her to sit down, but she couldn’t. Her heart was feeling funny again and she was starting to feel sick, and to be honest she didn’t like it. She didn’t like what this boy was doing to her. 

“I..I...,” and she just turned and walked away. She needed some water or to sit down or call her dad to take her home-  _something_. El was starting to think that going to school had been a bad idea. Why couldn’t she just be a normal teenager and talk to boys, cute boys, without looking like an idiot and feeling like she was going to die? Granted, she had never had to talk to guys before, but still- it wasn’t a feeling she liked. 

She was just about to go to the girl’s bathroom to splash some water in her face and try to talk herself down when she heard the sound of Max’s voice behind her.

“Hey, El! Wait up!”

El turned around to see her, skateboard still tucked under her arm as she caught up with her.

“Why’d you leave?”

She gave her a small shrug, not really wanting to explain that there was no good reason as to why she left. She was just nervous about talking to her cute friend after she had made an idiot out of herself in front of him this morning, and she didn’t want him to realize that she was not interesting or pretty or anything else that was probably expected out of her as the new girl. 

“Are you,” Max seemed to hesitate. “Are you like...nervous or something about boys?”

“What,” El asked, feeling herself blush.

“It’s just that Will was saying that you probably left because you weren’t used to talking to boys and I was thinking maybe he was right.”

“Is Will the one with the black hair and freckles?”

“No, that’s Mike.”

 _Mike_. She felt herself smile at the name.

“Oh my God,” Max said, disrupting her thoughts. “Do you _like_  him?”

“No!” El blushed despite herself, trying to turn her face away from Max, but the girl quickly grabbed her by the shoulders.

“You do,” Max exclaimed. “Oh my God, I can’t believe that you like Mike!”

The more Max said it the more embarrassed El felt. She didn’t know how to explain it. She knew she wasn’t embarrassed about liking him because he was cute and had a nice smile and if Max was friends with him then he couldn’t be bad, but hearing it out loud made the whole thing seem silly.

“Don’t tell anyone,” El found herself saying quickly. “I bumped into him this morning and thought he was cute, but I felt dumb and embarrassed and I just...I’m not ready to talk to him yet.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ellie,” Max smiled. “I won’t tell anyone. But just so you know, Mike, all of the boys at the table, aren’t scary or anything. Don’t be afraid to talk to them.”

And El had accepted that advice kindly, she even felt happy that she had a secret to share with her new friend, but then class started again. She found herself sharing it with Mike. The entire period he spent it talking out loud in class, answering questions and making comments, and he was so  _smart_. El was smart, too. Her dad always told her so. But she wasn’t as smart as he was. There was no way that he couldn’t possibly think she wasn’t idiot. He hadn’t even heard her formulate a complete sentence!

Max had said he wasn’t scary, but she was wrong. Because now he was a cute boy with nice friends and an intelligence that made other kids around her groan and she couldn’t ever talk to him if she didn’t want him to think she was a mouth breather. 

She ended up having an art class with Will, the actual boy had hypothesized her “nervous about boys” thing, and a history class with Dustin and Lucas, the other two boys that had been at the table. But those boys didn’t make her stomach feel funny. They were nice and fun to talk to, but she didn’t feel about them the way she did about Mike.

Dustin and Lucas had walked her out of class, going on about how Napoleon had once been attacked by rabbits, when she saw Mike coming towards them. Her mind told her to calm down. She had talked to his friends already, he shouldn’t be so intimidating. But the closer he got, the more she felt her guard coming up, and she quickly excused herself. 

That day had been replayed over in head countless times. She knew she had overreacted. Saying “Hi” to the guy wouldn’t have been a big deal, but instead she chose to walk away not once, but three different times. 

“He hates me,” El told Max the next day.

“No, he doesn’t,” she assured her.

But she saw the way he acted around her, always rolling her eyes when she said something, sitting at the opposite end of the table to avoid her, never inviting her over to his house when the rest of the party got together to study or play D&D. 

Despite all this, El still liked him. She liked the way he got excited when he talked about things and the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed. Max kept telling her that it was all in her head, that if she talked to him then everything would be fine, but every time she would try to tell him something, she’d choke. They had been in the same friend group for almost three months, it seemed a little late to start talking to him now. 

Until the day when everything changed. 

El had been at a  _The Wizard of Oz_  rehearsal, one of the lasts before their opening night performance, and Mike had been there, too, having shown up the past few weeks at Dustin’s request for technical assistance. She liked having Mike around, getting to see him a few extra hours while he worked over the soundboard or on the stage’s lights. 

The day everything changed, she had been asked by the director to go up the sound booth and ask Mike about a microphone that wasn’t connected and to bring Max down with her. When she was approaching the room, though, she heard Mike’s voice stop her dead in her tracks.

“I just don’t understand why you had to bring El into the group!”

El felt her heart drop. Mike didn’t want her in the group?

“There’s nothing wrong with El,” Max defended.

“Yes there is! She’s annoying and whiny and overrated.”

“Overrated,” Max yelled, a little laughter in her voice.

“Yes, overrated. Sometimes when she’s singing up on stage I want to cut off her mic just so I won’t have to hear her anymore.” 

El felt tears start to form in her eyes, turning away from them before they could realize that she was there. The last thing she had heard was Max saying, “You should be nicer to her” but she didn’t want to listen anymore. 

She had been right. The boy she had liked for the past few months hated her. She had heard him say it himself. There was no more questioning about it. El felt her heart plummet as more tears started to fall down her cheeks. He was smart and cute to her, but to him she was annoying and whiny. 

She was still feeling a little sad, until she saw his face again through the open glass of the sound booth. Instead of the extra skip she would usually feel, she felt angry. Who was he to say all those things about her? She didn’t deserve them. When she saw his face she felt her hands form into fists at her side, her eyes slanted and she felt something towards him she never had before.

She hated him.

The next week she decided to take a new approach to Mike. In their English class, instead of quietly adoring his brains, she challenged his responses. Because yeah, Mike was smart, but so was she. At their lunch table, she began to speak up more, making sure to be obvious she was never talking to him. On the weekends, she would invite everyone besides him to go over to her house to do homework or watch movies. If Mike Wheeler wanted to hate her, she was going to give him a damn good reason to. 

The back and forth passive aggressiveness between them lasted for the rest of the year, into the summer, and carried on their junior year, where they found each other once again sharing an English class. The rest of their friends tried talking to her about it, and she assumed they had talked to Mike as well. And El did feel guilty about their open...rivalry? Feud? Whatever it was, it was something that El had no intention of letting go of for a long time. He had made her feel horrible and they just couldn’t understand that.

There was a lot of things she couldn’t understand. But the number one thing was why the universe worked the way it did. 

When her English teacher had announced a project at the beginning of October, she hadn’t thought much about it. It was supposed to be creative, the guidelines pretty much open to interpretation, and the idea of being artistic instead of having to write an essay seemed exciting. That was until the teacher announced that the girls, a surprisingly even number to the boys, would be picking names out of a hat to see who their partner would be.

El’s stomach dropped. _A partner?_

“Ladies choice,” the teacher had laughed.

“Can’t we just pick partners ourselves,” someone else said, but the teacher only shook our head.

“No, ladies and gentlemen. This time we are going to let the universe, destiny if you will, decide for you.”

She walked to the back of the classroom, stopping in front of El’s desk first while all the eyes in the room followed her. El took a deep breath, telling herself to calm down as she reached her hand into the hat and grabbed a slip of paper. She was the first one to choose. Her chances of not getting  _him_ were the best they could be. She unfolded the paper, the same nervousness she had once felt all those months ago returning as she read the name of her partner to herself: Michael Wheeler. 

She looked across the room and saw that he was still staring at her, and something about the look of her face must have made it obvious who her partner was as the look of annoyance on his dropped into disbelief.

_Shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had this idea stuck in my head for weeks and i was like "julia, do you really want to start a multichapter fic even though you know how much you hate commitment and that is the #1 reason you're not in a relationship??" but then i also thought "julia, you hate yourself" so now here we are!!!
> 
> i honestly have no idea if anyone is into this idea or fic or if it's just a me thing so let me know if i should continue (or if i'm wasting my time writing this, y'know lol but i really do hope you guys liked this :) )


	2. playing house and then burning it down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El work on their project.

_Of-fucking-course_ El would pick his name out of the hat. It was just like her to make him want to suffer.

The second that she looked up at him after reading the slip of paper, he knew who she had chosen. Her eyes had gone wide and her face turned red, which was exactly what she looked like every time she was going to start arguing with him in class. Realization sunk in that being partners meant that she was going to yell at him outside of class, too and he wanted more than anything to spend his free time with anyone besides her. 

Mike knew he wasn’t the best person, but was he so terrible that the universe wanted him to be tormented at the hands of El Hopper?

“Can we switch,” he asked their teacher quickly, trying to make the agony of the situation as clear as possible.

“Yeah, can we,” El added. She hadn’t even read the name out loud yet. Their teacher gave them both questioning glances before taking the slip of paper out of El’s hands to read off the name.

“No switching partners,” she told them, a little laughter hidden in her voice.

“But-.” El started but her teacher put her hand up to silence her. 

“No switching. That’s the rule,” she said, moving away from her and going to the next female student in the row. “The universe chose for you. You two will be fine.”

What their teacher didn’t know, though, was that the universe sometimes wasn’t on their side. Mike had had his fair share amount of times of the universe simply being mean to him because it could be. Hearing the snickers and whispers of his classmates, Mike knew it was one of those times.

His friction with El wasn’t exactly a secret. Anyone who had shared an English class with the two of them the past year was well aware of how often Mike and El used class discussions to argue with each other. It had started off about Ophelia during sophomore year and had transferred on into discussions about Edgar Allan Poe and  _The Scarlet Letter_ , and any other minuscule question a teacher posed. They had even once managed to have a ten-minute dispute about whether “whom” had been used correctly in a sentence he wrote, a debate so stupid that it surpassed their previously notorious five-minute “I vs Me” argument. 

So, no, Mike did not think having El as a partner would go well. 

The entire class period he spent it with his head down on his desk, having gotten a serious headache just by thinking about having to work with El outside of school. Scenarios started playing in his head about her working on a separate project on her own or purposely not giving him credit or leaving him to do everything himself. It wasn’t until the bell rang that dismissed them for lunch that he finally looked back up, his teacher giving him a teasing thumbs up that he fully wanted to reply to with his own hand gesture, but decided flipping her off wouldn’t be a good idea before a project worth ten percent of his grade. On the other hand, it would make El mad-.

“So when are we working on this project?”

He jumped as he looked up to see El standing by his desk with her books and backpack, looking as if she was waiting for him to leave the classroom. Even though they sat at the same table, a downfall of having mutual friends, they never walked out of class together. They just left separately and met up again at the table where they sat at opposite ends and completely ignored the other’s existence. It really was for the best.

“Can you relax,” Mike said, rolling his eyes while he gathered up his stuff. “We just got it assigned today.”

He walked past her, trying to make it clear that he didn’t want to be followed, but she either didn’t care or didn’t notice as she hurried up to try and keep his pace in the hallways.

“Look, I'm not happy about this partnership either, but the sooner we finish the sooner we can stop talking to each other,” she told him, practically running alongside him into the cafeteria.

“ _We_  are not talking.  _You_  are talking.”

They reached the table before the others had, the two of them with the classroom closest to the cafeteria. Mike sat down at his usual spot at the end of the table, but El decided to sit down next to him instead of where she usually sat, far away from him, just like he liked it.

“What are you doing,” he asked offended.

She opened up her notebook and uncapped one of her pens.

“I’m getting us started on our project.”

“And you have to sit here so we can do that?”

“If I sit over there,” she told him, pointing her pen in her empty seat’s direction, “I won’t be able to hear you when you talk.”

“You’re so dramatic,” he groaned, putting his head in his hands.

“I am not being dramatic. I’m trying to be considerate of our friends-.” But at that point he was grabbing his lunchbox from the table and standing up to go and sit down at her usual spot. He made a big deal out of it, going all the way around the table and letting his lunchbox drop loudly on the table’s surface before plopping himself down. 

“Really, Michael,” she deadpanned, her eyes slanted at him and biting the inside of her cheek.

“What? What did you say,” he asked loudly. There were only a few people in the cafeteria since students were barely starting to file in, but he yelled anyways, leaning across the table and pointing at his ears. “I’m sorry, you’re totally right! I can’t hear you at this end of the table!”

“You’re so infuriating!”

“What was that,” he asked even louder than before. “My soul is intoxicating?”

It looked like she was about to scream and Mike smirked at her expression, laughing at how quickly she turned red. Before he was able to say anything else, Dustin and Will showed up at the table, looking at their seat changes and the looks on their faces. 

“Did we get assigned different seats or something,” Dustin asked, not knowing where exactly he was supposed to sit. He chose his usual spot and ended up sitting next to El. Will hesitantly took his seat next to Dustin. 

“Your friend is being an imbecile,” El told Dustin.

“Oh no! Will, what did you,” Dustin exclaimed, elbowing Will in the ribs after he yelled in protest.

“There are two imbeciles,” El sighed, covering her face in her hands.

“Make that three,” Max chimed, walking up to their table and nudging her head in Lucas’s direction. Mike laughed and gave her a high-five as she sat down next to him, the both of them ignoring the offended look on Lucas’s face. “What’s up, Ellie?”

“Mike and I have to work on a project together,” she started explaining, ignoring the exaggerated gasps from her friends. “And he is refusing to cooperate.”

“Correction, I am not refusing. I am delaying,” Mike defended.

“Correction,” El said, mimicking him. “You’re an idiot.”

“Name one time I’ve been an idiot,” Mike challenged.

“I can name a hundred!”

“Yeah, Mike. You really don’t want to go down that route,” Lucas chimed in, making Max laugh next to him.

“Who’s side are you,” he asked defensively.

Lucas said, “There are no sides” at the same time that Dustin said, “El” and it made El laugh and point at Mike’s face, the both of them arguing on top of one another. 

“Can you guys stop,” Max tried yelling.

“I liked it better when they didn’t talk to each other,” whispered a defeated Will.

All the meanwhile Dustin was pretending to sob, throwing his head in his hands and screaming, “Stop fighting, you’re tearing this family apart! Think of the children!” 

“Shut up,” Mike and El yelled at the same time, turning their heads from each to look at Dustin who immediately stopped pretending to cry.

Mike took a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling before opening his eyes to look at El who was already staring at him expectantly. 

“Okay,” he said calmly. “Let’s agree not to talk about this anymore today.”

“But-.”

“El,” he said dejected, his eyebrows raised. They obviously were not going to get anything done during lunch and he knew she had the play to rehearse for after school since Dustin was once again part of the stage crew. It wasn’t worth arguing about their project that day. 

She pursed her lips, turning away from him and giving him a quiet, “Fine.”

The rest of their lunch was more quiet than usual, Dustin, Lucas, and Max the only ones really contributing anything to the conversation. Mike looked up a few times to see El only taking a few small bites out of her food, only looking up at Max maybe once to give her a small sideways smile. 

Mike felt a little guilty. The only times that they would talk, they would argue. He knew that. But it had always been inside a classroom, never in front of their friends. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t feel a little awkward now that his friends couldn’t just ignore the fact that this was how their relationship was. Now they had witnessed it. If he had to guess, that’s probably why El was feeling sad. 

For a split second, he thought about apologizing to her. About everything, being mean to her the past few months and arguing with her just now and making things difficult for her. But the second passed, the bell rang above for class, and he decided that if he was going to be listening to the universe, it was a sign he probably shouldn’t dwell on El’s feelings.

Which was, he ultimately decided, for the best since the next day she continued to aggravate him about the project. She came up to him before and after class, asking when, when, when were they going to work on their project. For the entire week she came up to him, and every time he told her that he was busy. 

“Well I’m busy, too,” she told him. “I have rehearsals every week day after school until five, and I’ll have to ask the director if I can miss some days for this.”

“I have something going on every day of the week,” he said, trying to avoid the conversation. It wasn’t a total lie. He did have an AV club meeting on Friday and a job to work on the weekend at The Hawk, plus homework and babysitting Holly. Also part of the agenda: avoiding El Hopper for the rest of his life. “Why can’t we just agree on a project idea and work on it separately?”

“I’m supposed to just  _trust_  you to do your half correctly,” she asked, as if that was the most unbelievable thing she had ever heard in her life. “I’m going to end up having to do it all myself!”

“Then you’re going to have to wait to do it together,” he told her before he started to walk away.

“You’re killing me, Wheeler,” she yelled after him.

“If I’m lucky,” he yelled back. 

But that didn’t seem to stop her from bugging him every day the next week, too. Then finally on Thursday before class started, she grabbed him by the shoulders and anchored him down to his seat just as he was about to stand to use the pencil sharpener. 

“What the fu-.”

“Our project is due tomorrow,” she said through gritted teeth.

“What?! I thought it was due next Friday?!”

“Tomorrow,” she said again, slower and emphasizing each syllable. “When are we working on it?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, his leg starting to bounce up and down. He really had thought he had more time to avoid El before finally breaking her down and making her realize they should work on it separately. But if El had given him until the day before to work on it before, it was obvious there was no chance she was backing down.

“Okay,” he started. “I have to pick up my little sister from school and then I have to go straight home. I’m babysitting my little sister and I’m housesitting because my parents have been out of town since Monday. You can come over after school and we’ll work on it.”

“And you’re sure we’re going to get it done,” she looked at him, the uncertainty evident in her voice but even more so in her eyes.

“Even if we have to pull an all-nighter,” he assured her. But she still looked nervous, and he rolled his eyes before deciding to add a “Promise” as sincere as he possibly could towards El. 

“Okay,” she exhaled.

“Okay,” he repeated. He expected her to walk off towards her desk, but she didn’t move. “What?”

“Where do you live?”

“You know where I live.”

“Oh right! From all of those times you invited me over,” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

He rolled his eyes before taking her notebook and writing down his address and phone number. 

“You know, a lot of girls would kill for this information,” he teased, handing the notebook back to her. 

“That’s funny considering I want to die because I need this information.”

She walked away to her desk before he had a chance to say something back to her, but he rolled his eyes at her all the same.

There was no way he was going to survive an all nighter with her without him wanting to burn down his house. 

* * *

 

Ever since El had agreed to go to Mike’s house after school, she had gotten an unsettling feeling in her stomach. It was the kind a person got when their intuition was trying to warn them against a situation, like waiting in line for a rollercoaster or the anticipation before a jump scare in a horror movie. And she knew that going over to his house was probably not the best idea. It was crossing over into enemy territory, basically a suicide mission.

_Oh my God, would Mike kill me_ , she thought. She knew she was annoying, sometimes even more so on purpose simply to pester him, but had she pulled him so over the edge that he would be capable of killing her? She tried to get the thought out of her head as she sat and waited on the sidewalk after school for her dad to pick her up. 

It wasn’t until he arrived in his Hawkins Police Department truck that she felt some of her nerves settle down. Her father was the chief, Mike knew that, and so she ultimately decided that he was smart enough to know not to kill the chief’s daughter. With this in mind, she practically skipped over to the truck with a smile on her face, opened the door and hopped inside.

“Hi, Dad,” she greeted him warmly, leaning over and placing a kiss on his cheek, the scruff of his beard scratchy and tickling her face. She closed the door, put on her seatbelt, and looked over to him who was looking at her with an expecting look on her face.

“Alright, kid. What do you want,” he asked, pulling away from the school and giving her a glance through the corner of his eye.

“Permission.”

“Permission? Permission for what?”

“I have to go over to a fr-,” she stopped herself. “I have to go over to Mike’s house.”

“Mike,” he said, the name sounding foreign on his tongue. “Is this the kid you have a crush on?”

El turned to look at him so fast that her neck audibly snapped. Her eyes were wide and her voice was loud as she quickly went to defend herself.

“I do not have a crush on Mike!”

“You talk about him all the time.”

“Because I hate him,” she yelled, feeling her face warming up. “He is the most annoying, pretentious, condescending human being I have ever met!”

“Okay, kid! Jeez,” Hopper said, putting his hands up surrender before putting them back on the steering wheel. “Alright, I get it. He’s your sworn enemy.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, leaning back in her seat and staring at the window. 

El didn’t mean to sound over-defensive, but she was tired of people thinking she had a crush on Mike. She  _didn’t_. 

Max was always bugging her about it, asking her if she was sure that she didn’t have any feelings towards Mike, to which she would reply, “Oh I have  _plenty_  feelings about Mike Wheeler, but none of them are romantic.” Or every time El would glare at Mike during lunch, Dustin would mouth the word “electricity” and she’d throw at him whatever was nearby. 

Even girls she didn’t know that well would come up to her and ask if anything was going on between her and Mike, wanting the go-ahead to ask him out. “By all means, take him as far away as possible,” El would tell them. But as far as she knew, Mike never went on dates with any of them. Maybe the girls never believed her when she told them they were strictly antagonistic.   

“So why are you asking for permission to go over to his house,” Jim asked after a moment of silence, taking El out of her thoughts.

“Because we got partnered up to do a project together for our English class,” El started explaining. “The idiot kept blowing me off and it’s due tomorrow. But he has to stay at his house with his little sister so we have to do the project there.”

“And how long is this project going to take?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what we’re doing, yet.”

“Hmm,” he murmured, still looking unsure.

“Dad, c’mon on,” she pleaded. “It’s worth ten percent of my grade.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable with you sleeping over at this boy’s house, who you so obviously have a crush on.”

“I don’t have a crush on him,” she yelled again, making him burst out into laughter. 

“Okay, okay,” he said in between laughs. “How about this? I drop you off right now and you get your project done. You call me up as soon as you finish and I’ll pick you up.” 

She was going to say thank you, but he continued. “My shift ends at three am. I will call you at that time to see if you’re done and if you’re still not, I expect you to find your own way back to the house by 6:30 am tomorrow so that you can shower and change and I can take you to school. Does that sound like a plan?”

“Yes,” she nodded excitedly, the thought of finishing her project making her feel so much more relieved. “Thank you!”

“And under no circumstances are you to sleep, okay,” he told her sternly, using his best “Strict Dad” voice that he thought scared her, but never did. “You’re there to do homework.”

“I wouldn’t even  _dream_  of sleeping at Mike Wheeler’s house.”

He rolled his eyes and muttered a provoking “whatever you say” right before asking El for Mike’s address. He turned the car around and started to drive in the proper direction until he pulled up in front a large, white and brick house. There was already a car parked in the driveway, presumably Mike’s dad’s, so they assumed that Mike had already returned from picking up his little sister.

Hopper asked for the phone number that Mike had given El and he scribbled it down on a scrap piece of paper, tucking it into his shirt’s pocket.

“I’m calling you at three if I don’t hear from you before then,” he told her sternly.

“I know, Dad,” she said, leaning over to give him a hug before getting out of the truck with her backpack and books. She started walking towards the front door when she heard him yell.

“Don’t kill each other!”

She rolled her eyes and knocked on the door before turning back to look at him smiling in the driver’s seat.

“No promises,” she yelled back.

Mike opened the door just as El had finished her sentence and she waved at her dad one last time before he drove off.

“No promises that what,” Mike asked, opening the door farther so that El could go inside.

“That we won’t kill each other.”

She heard him say something, but she wasn’t paying attention at that point. She chose instead to take in the inside of Mike’s house. It was like  _Country Living_  had thrown up in there. She’d only skimmed through some issues at doctor’s appointments, but it looked just like the photographs she had seen in the magazines. Floral and checkered wallpaper covered in family photos, wood paneling, crocheted throw pillows and little knick-knacks of woodland creatures on shelves and drawers. El didn’t know what exactly she had been expecting, but the “perfect-nuclear-Indiana-family” decor was definitely made a lot of sense considering Mike’s narrow personality. 

She walked up to one of the wall’s, noticing a particular school picture of Mike from what looked to be a couple years ago, wearing a cream-colored sweater with green and brown zigzag and diamond patterns. She tried hard not to laugh at how dorky he looked in the picture, trying to regain her composure so she could insult Mike thoroughly without laughing.

“Say, Mike,” she started, turning back around to look at him, but was startled when she saw a little girl coming towards her out of nowhere.

“Hi,” the little blonde girl said, her two ponytails bouncing behind her as she ran up to El. 

“Hi,” El smiled back. She was cute, her blue eyes shining up at her and her sneaker clad feet lighting up as she continuously tapped her feet on the floor.

“You’re pretty,” she smiled, to which Mike scoffed and then let out a little laugh.

“You’re pretty, too,” El told her honestly, all the meanwhile putting her hand behind her back to flip off Mike without the little girl seeing.

“El, this is Holly,” Mike introduced, twisting her middle finger quickly as he walked by her to make her yelp. “Holly, this is El.”

“Do you want to help me with my homework, El,” Holly asked her, her eyes growing wider. 

“Sure,” El replied, letting the little girl grab her hand and pull her into the kitchen where she already had all of her workbooks scattered on the table. The truth was that El really didn’t want to help Holly on her homework. She just wanted to get her project done and go home, but Holly was so cute she just couldn’t bring herself to say no. It made no logical sense how such a sweet girl could be related to Mike Wheeler.

“What grade are you in, Holly,” El asked, picking up one of her math books and flipping through the pages of simple addition and subtraction. God, if only math was still that simple in high school.

“Second grade,” she smiled proudly, grabbing some worksheets and tapping them against the table so that it could be more organized. El smiled warmly at her and she set down the workbook, so that she could let her explain what was her homework was. It was only 4:30 after all. She figured she could help Holly out with some homework before her and Mike started their project. 

Mike sat at the opposite end of the table, taking out all of his notebooks, so that he could get started on some of his own homework. 

“Really, Mike,” she asked him, her eyebrows raised at him.

“I have other stuff due tomorrow too, Hopper,” he answered, not looking up from his chemistry textbook. “You wanted to help Holly, so you can do that while I finished this.”

El groaned at him, rolling her eyes so far back that Holly thought she saw nothing but the white of her eyes for a second. 

“Are you guys fighting,” Holly asked them, looking at one and then the other.

Just as El answered, “No, sweetie,” Mike said, “Always.” El retaliated by throwing one of Holly’s erasers at his head, but he simply grabbed it and threw it back at her, completely missing her by a few feet. She laughed at his terrible aim and he only grumbled in response.

The next hour went by quietly, the only voice heard was El’s while she helped Holly with her math and vocabulary homework, until her stomach grumbled and it made Mike chuckle. 

“You hungry,” he asked her, getting up from the table before she could even respond. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten anything at lunch that day, deciding to take the break to go to the library to finish her homework. “Are you hungry, too, Holls?”

“Yup,” Holly answered him honestly. She turned to El excitedly. “Mike is a really good cook!”

“Is he now,” she asked her, looking at him skeptically while he started to take out cooking utensils and ingredients out cabinets and the refrigerator. 

“Our mom taught him,” Holly told her, starting to put her completed homework away in her backpack. “She said she’s not sure when he’ll finally find a girlfriend, but she still doesn’t trust any other woman to cook for him the way she can.”

El burst out in laughter at that, Holly joining in with her even though she really didn’t know why El was laughing so hard. She turned to look at Mike who was looking at the both of them with a crimson blush on his face and it made El start laughing even more, holding on to the sides of her stomach.

“You know, I am more than fine with you starving, El,” Mike told her seriously.

“Alright, I’m sorry,” El apologized through fits of laughter. “Please continue on with your cooking, Martha Stewart.”

He flipped her off, but started moving about the kitchen again, turning the radio on and changing it to one of the more popular stations. El was helping Holly finish her last question of homework, when “Africa” by Toto started playing. Mike turned up the radio as the familiar opening tune started and he slid across the floor, bobbing his head to the beat of the music.

“ _I hear the drums echoing tonight_ ,” he started singing, off-key and loud, and it made El jump in her seat. “ _But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation_.”

“Please, stop,” El yelled, making Holly giggle. 

But Mike ignored her, deciding to sing even louder, “ _She’s coming in from 30 flights, the moonlight wings reflect the stars that guide me towards South Asia._ ”

“Those aren’t even the right lyrics,” El scolded him. “They don’t make any sense!” 

“I don’t care,” he said quickly, before jumping into the song again and singing the wrong lyrics as confidently as he could. Holly stood up from her chair to go and join him, grabbing the wooden spoon he’d taken out to use as a microphone. When they got to the chorus, the both of them started singing even louder, Mike pointing at El and spinning Holly around. El would have found it adorable if it would have been anyone besides Mike making a complete fool of themselves. 

“You’re making my ears bleed,” El complained, covering her ears and Mike turned the volume on the radio to its maximum. She tried not to smile as he crouched down to bump his hip against Holly’s. For the rest of the song she heard the brother and sister messing up the lyrics to one of her favorite songs while they both sang terribly off-key and danced even worse. When it was done, they both bowed for El and she made sure to emphasize “Great job, Holly” as she started clapping for her, ignoring the hurt look on Mike’s face.

He went back to cooking, turning the radio down to a normal volume, and Holly went to her room to put her things away. When “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds came on, Mike started singing along to that song,too. It was then that El came up with an idea for their project.

“A mixtape,” she said excitedly, writing the song down in her notebook. Mike turned to look at her with a confused look on his face and she went up to him to explain her idea. “We can make a mixtape with songs that relate to Holden Caulfield, like write down the lyrics and explain why he’d like the song or why they relate to his character.”

The books they could choose from for their project, the only ones they had read in their English class so far, had been  _The Catcher in the Rye_ ,  _Lord of the Flies_ , and  _Animal Farm. The Catcher in the Rye,_  however had been by far her favorite book. She had known other students were going to make short films or perform a scene from the book or draw something, but she hadn’t heard anyone mention making a mixtape.

“That actually sounds like a pretty cool idea,” Mike said, looking surprised as he found himself agreeing with her. She also didn’t hide the surprised look on her face. “We can use my typewriter to write the lyrics and explanations to turn in with the mixtape.”

“We can make it a little book, even,” she said. “And decorate it just so it looks more presentable.”

“Alright,” he smiled. “We’ll get started on it after dinner.”

She smiled back at him before reminding herself that she was not supposed to be smiling at him.  _You hate him_ , she told herself, and went back to sitting down at the table, trying to come up with other songs they could include in their project.

“Do you mind setting up the table,” he asked her after a few moments of silence. He looked at her kindly and then something in him visibly changed and he coughed before changing his expression. “I mean, if you can manage that. You have set up a table before, right?”

She scowled at him and rolled her eyes before cleaning up the books from the table and setting them aside. “I think I can handle some silverware,” she told him, scooting past him to get the plates and forks. 

When everything was set up and Mike had put the food on the table, some homemade macaroni and cheese and roasted broccoli who just by the sight of it was making her mouth water, he called for Holly to come down. The three of the sat and ate the food, Holly occupying the silence by telling them about her day at school with her friends. 

“How did you guys become friends,” Holly asked them, smiling at the two teenagers. 

“We didn’t,” Mike answered bitterly, taking another bite of his food.

“Oh,” she said disappointingly, before turning back to her own food. 

El would have called him an asshole if there wasn’t a seven-year-old present at the table with them. Even though part of her knew he was right. They weren’t friends.

After dinner, Mike decided to call up Will to ask if he could borrow some of his tapes, and when he hung up informed the girls that he was going to bike over and meet Will halfway to get them. 

“Can you watch over Holly, real quick,” he asked El, putting his jacket back on.

“Yeah, and probably better than you, too,” El told him, taking the empty plates to the sink. She turned and saw him glaring at her from the doorway and she rolled her eyes. “I’ll watch her. Go.”

He picked up the house keys and left the house, leaving the two girls alone. El decided that the best way to say thanks to Mike for the dinner, which was the best mac and cheese she had ever tried, not that she would tell him though, would be to do the dishes for him while he was gone. That way when he came back, they could get started on their project right away.

“Wanna dry, while I wash,” El asked Holly, noticing that the little girl was just standing by her and staring. She nodded and ran off somewhere in the house, returning with a foot stool that put her at level with the sink. It was silent between the two of them for a while before Holly spoke up, her voice quiet and uncertain. 

“Why do you and Mike talk to each other like that?”

El looked at her confused before she realized what she was asking. She didn’t want to tell her, “Well, you see, I had a crush on your brother and was shy about it until I realized he was a dick who hated me, so I decided I hated him, too and now we can’t talk without arguing.” So instead, El settled for, “Your brother is really mean to me.”

“There’s a boy in my class who’s really mean to me, too,” Holly told her sadly.

“Maybe it’s because he likes you,” El shrugged. “Sometimes boys are dumb and don’t know how to act around girls they like so they end up being mean. It’s not smart or the right thing to do, but it happens.”

Holly took this information in, looking as if she was considering it, before speaking again. “Well then maybe my brother likes you, too.”

El stopped washing the dishes for a second and looked over to Holly who was staring at her with a little gleam in her eyes. She was about to tell her that her and Mike were different, that there was no way he could possibly like her, when he walked back into the house. 

“I’m back,” he said, balancing a box of tapes in his hands and taking in the sight of the girls washing dishes before chuckling and heading upstairs. “I’m going to put these in my rooms.”

El and Holly finished up, and the younger girl went upstairs, rushing to get in the shower and change into her pajamas. El followed her up with her books and backpacks, taking a much slower pace as she looked at the pictures on the walls. The Wheelers looked like a nice enough family. She didn’t understand why Mike was such an asshole.

She found Mike in his room, a bedroom covered in sci-fi movie posters and action figures and trophies on his shelves, adjusting some settings on his stereo system.

“I’m getting it ready to record the mixtape,” he explained over his shoulder as he looked at her. Then he went into another room of the house, coming back with piles of magazines while Holly trailed him with glue sticks, scissor, and construction paper. “For your book,” he said, dropping everything on the floor.

Holly was now dressed in purple matching pajamas, her blonde hair still wet and pulled back with a matching scrunchie. Mike told her to cut out pictures from the magazines of boys and girls and flowers and anything else she thought looked cute, and she happy obliged. As the girl sat down on the floor flipping through pictures, Mike and El sat on his bed looking through Will’s tapes and thinking about what songs to include in their project.

After hours of listening to songs and jotting and crossing out ideas, they had finally curated and finalized a list of ten songs to include. They just had to go back and record them and then listen to the lyrics slowly so that El could type them out. It was kind of frustrating just how bad Mike was at hearing the proper lyrics, leaving El to write them down. 

When they were done with the first half of the tape, only having recorded them and written down the lyrics, still not explaining the significance to Holden Caulfield, El looked down to realize that Holly had fallen asleep. That had explained her silence for while. She informed Mike, who tiptoed over his bed to pick up the little girl in his arms.

“Can you open the door,” he whispered to El, letting her lead the way to the small girl’s bedroom. She opened the door and reached to turn on the night light while Mike tucked her into bed, putting the blankets on top of her and sticking her teddy bear under her arms. Holly snuggled close to it, and Mike bent down to kiss her forehead before walking back towards El. The sight pulled at something in El’s heart, but she tried to convince herself it was because of Holly’s cuteness alone, not Mike. 

“I want a baby,” El sighed, more to herself than to him. 

“Not tonight, honey. We’ve got homework,” he replied cheekily, patting her roughly on the back before walking back across the hall to his room. She scowled at him even though she knew he couldn’t see her, whispering insults to him as she followed. 

When she reached the room she noticed that it was past midnight, surprised at how quickly the time had gone by. She sat down at the desk next to Mike’s position near the stereo and the repeated their technique, playing a song once to record it, and then playing it again but stopping it after every few words so that El could type out the lyrics. 

When they were done with the second half, El decided that she would write the analyzations for the lyrics while Mike would finish cutting up pictures and glue them to the construction paper book they had made to accompany the tape. Mike had also decided they needed to decorate the cover of the case so he started cutting up pictures for that, naming the tape, “A Tape For The Boy In The Red Hunting Hat,” and then typing out the track list for the back. 

El paid no attention to him, writing down coherent explanations for the songs and looking through the book for quotes that emphasized her points. Every time she finished writing a paper, she’d hand it to him and he’d glue it in. By the time she was done with the seventh song, she noticed that it was already nearing three A.M. She told Mike she was going to borrow his phone and headed downstairs to call her dad.

He picked up, expecting her to be ready to go, but she explained she still had to write some things and make sure everything looked okay. He agreed, wished her luck, and by the time she went back upstairs, she noticed that Mike looked like he was falling asleep.

“What happened to our ‘all-nighter,’” she asked him, feeling a little tired herself, but resisting it so she could finish the project. He mumbled a “fuck you, Hopper” and she laughed a little before sitting down at the typewriter to finish. 

By the time she was done, Mike was asleep. She was about to wake him up, but she decided that it would be a better idea if she finished the project herself. She glued the final pages, looked at the collages that Mike had managed to look cool, and flipped through it, happy with their project. Even though, it probably wasn’t the best opinion, considering her eyes kept closing no matter how much she tried to stop them. 

It was after four A.M. and there was no way she could make the trip across town to her house without trusting herself not to fall asleep. She looked down at Mike once more, and finally realized that he had a glue stick stuck to his face. She left out a laugh, rolled her eyes and called him an “idiot” before bending down to take it off of him.

He looked peaceful, not like the giant jerk she knew he was. Maybe that was why she didn’t hesitate to grab the blanket from his bed and to cover him from his place on the carpet. 

Another yawn escaped her, her eyes drooping closed and she found herself laying down next to him. She would just nap for a few minutes, wake up, and borrow his bike to go home. Her head turned towards his as she laid down, their faces only inches away from each other.

And before she was able to stop herself from thinking it, she thought about how she really liked the pink of Mike’s lips and how his eyelashes were noticeably long and curled even with his eyes closed. She let her pinky graze his for a moment and felt a throb in heart that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was a feeling she thought she had forgotten but even with the simple touch she knew she could never abandon. Not really. She was too physically exhausted in that moment to ignore or try to fight it.

And so with a final look at him, she completely closed her eyes and let the sound of his breathing quickly lull her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....y'all, i was honestly SO fucking surprised and overwhelmed by the reaction to the last chapter, i literally screamed a couple times. thank you so, so much to everyone who takes the time to leave a review and kudos and comes on tumblr to talk to me about it!! it means the world to me!!! thank you from the bottom and top of my lil heart :)
> 
> i hope you guys liked this chapter, i had so much fun writing el and mike that it kinda got away from me (just like things are kinda get away from el and mike in the next few chapters, whoops)


	3. sleeping with the enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El wake up.

The first thing Mike saw when he woke up that morning was El’s face.

He was used to waking up to the sight of his alarm clock on his night stand, the bright red neon numbers flashing “6:30” over and over until he pressed the snooze button. But this, waking up to a soft face with resting eyes and pink lips and messy brown curls, was much better.

Not that he would  _ever_  admit that aloud, obviously. It’s not like he’d lost his mind. He knew he hated El, a feeling that ran through his veins and made his heart beat faster every time he thought about her. The simple thought of having to talk to her was enough to turn his face crimson and make him feel aggravated in a way he couldn’t describe. But even he couldn’t deny that she looked beautiful when she was asleep. 

 _Probably because she’s not talking_ , he thought, mentally high-fiving himself for the insult.

And he didn’t know when exactly she had fallen asleep to next to him; he couldn’t even remember falling asleep himself, but he wasn’t about to complain. He snuggled further into his blanket ( _when had he gotten a blanket?_ ), watching her for a little while longer, studying her appearance in a way he couldn’t during the day. 

During the day when he saw her, her eyes were always so angry at him and her mouth was constantly turned downwards. He’d never seen her look as content as he had then being next to her. It was kind of reveling seeing her sleep, the way the sunlight peering in from the window brightened her face into a glow and her chest rose and fell with each breath and-

“Get away from me. Your breath stinks.”

And it was over. 

He quickly rolled his eyes, getting all of the thoughts about her beauty out of his mind and prepared himself for yet another day of academic rivalry with the girl laying next to him, while she grumbled and began to flinch as her eyes began to open and adjust to the sunlight. Once they were open and they fell on him, a confused expression on her face, her eyes quickly went wide.

“Oh my god,” she screamed, scrambling up from the floor. “What time is it?!”

She tripped on his blanket as she tried to make her way to his clock, something he would have laughed at if she hadn’t made him realize that the sun was shining from his bedroom, meaning it was well past seven A.M.

“Shit,” she yelled. She ran past him and out the door, hearing her heavy footsteps going down the stairs. He went to his alarm clock and saw the three numbers blaring at him, telling him that they were way too late for school.

“Shit,” he muttered, right before he remembered his little sister was also late for school. His parents were going to kill him when they saw the tardy mark on her attendance. He ran out of his room and across the hall, hearing the faint sound of El’s voice talking to someone saying, “I k-know. I’m sorry.” 

She sounded upset, he thought. He’d never heard her voice like that before. An angry tone, of course. It was basically her default with him, a hardwired setting. But the way he heard her speak then, worried and guilty, it gave him an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach. He ignored it, deciding it wasn’t his place to feel concern, and even if it was, there was no time for it.

He turned on the light of Holly’s room, the little girl still soundly asleep in her bed, and he rushed over to her. 

“Holls, wake up,” he told her, shaking her by her shoulders. She mumbled something and tried to pull the covers over her head, but he pulled them back. “Holls, I’m serious. We’re late for school!”

At that she shot up, staring at him with an alarmed expression on her face. 

“My perfect attendance record,” she shrieked, jumping out of bed and running to her closet for clothes, throwing items on the floor as she sorted out what to put on.

“You have ten minutes,” he said, walking out of the room to let her get ready. He was heading downstairs and ran into El as she was going up, almost knocking her backwards.

“Are you okay,” he asked her, grabbing her by the shoulders to steady her. She stared at him with watery eyes and nodded her head quickly before clearing her throat.

“Do you have clothes I can borrow,” she asked. “I didn’t take a shower last night and I don’t want to go to school in this.” 

She looked down at her striped shirt and jeans and mismatched socks. He didn’t really see what the problem was, but he didn’t want to argue with her so early.

“Yeah,” he said quickly, already beginning to descend the stairs again. “Just go through my closet and find whatever.”

“Okay, thanks,” he heard her say, right before it was followed by the sound of her feet treading up the stairs.

Mike made his way to the kitchen, getting to the freezer and pulling out the box of Eggo waffles before putting four of them in the toaster. While he waited for them to come out, he hurried and made a sandwich for Holly, putting it in a Ziploc bag and throwing it in her tin Care Bears lunchbox along with a jar of applesauce and a juice box. By the time he was done, the waffles he had put in the the toaster had popped out and he went to put in one more before running back upstairs.

“Five minutes,” he yelled, going into his bedroom and locking the door behind him. He quickly stripped himself of the clothes he had on the previous day and went to his closet to put on some jeans and a dark green sweater, the first pieces of clothing he could grab. He slipped on his sneakers and then put his and El’s project into his backpack before walking back out of his bedroom. The door to the bathroom was still closed.

“Hurry up,” he yelled, banging on the bathroom door. 

“My hair isn’t cooperating with me today,” El yelled back.

“Your hair has never cooperated with you,” he snarked. He was beginning to laugh at his own joke, when El opened the door, her curls sticking out everywhere.

“Fuck you,” she told him, her expression serious. But he wasn’t even paying attention to that. Instead his focus was on what she was wearing. The cream colored with sweater with the ugly green and brown pattern was currently on her body, the sleeves reaching a bit past her fingertips.

“Where did you get that,” he asked her incredulously, pointing at the sweater. He hadn’t worn it in years, only having worn it for his eighth grade yearbook picture because his grandmother had knitted it for him and his mom had begged him to wear it.

Her blank expression slowly turned into a smirk, her eyes brightening as she pushed back the sleeves.

“Do you like it,” she asked teasingly. “I found it in the back of your closet. You really should wear it more often, Mike. It’s lovely.”

“Oh my god,” he groaned, rubbing at his temples as she continued to to taunt him.

“Oh, and I also borrowed some socks,” she added, her voice still mocking him. “I have never seen one person own so many pairs of tube socks.”

“We do not have time for this,” he grumbled, his face going red from equal parts embarrassment and anger. He pushed past her and into the bathroom, giving her the hairbrush before closing the door and locking it. Mike heard her laugh a little bit, calling out to Holly before the laughter and her footsteps grew faint.

 _Well at least she’s smiling_ , he thought, right before following it up with,  _why the fuck do I care if she’s smiling?_ He shook his head, quickly brushing his teeth, putting on deodorant, and running his fingers through his hair. Deciding it was good enough, he got out and saw Holly and El were both ready with their backpacks, the smaller girl holding onto El’s hands as she dragged her down the stairs.

“C’mon, we’re late,” Holly said and Mike went to grab his backpack before following them downstairs. He grabbed the waffles from where he’d left them, Holly’s lunchbox, and the keys, quickly locking the door to the house and going to where the girls, mostly Holly, were waiting impatiently by the car. He unlocked the doors for them, getting in and turning the car on before handing an Eggo to Holly in the backseat and two to El.

“What is this,” she asked him, taking the waffles from him.

“Breakfast,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

He put his two on his lap and putting on his seatbelt before reversing out of the driveway and going on to the street. On the way to the elementary school, Holly kept crying about how she didn’t want a tardy on her attendance, talking with her mouth full of waffle.

“I just can’tbe late to school, Mikey,” Holly cried. “If I don’t get perfect attendance, I don’t get to go the pizza party at the end of the year!”

“Aww, it’s okay Holly,” El soothed, reaching her hand back to hold on to Holly’s. “Your brother will explain everything to the school when you get there. Won’t you,  _Mikey_?” 

He huffed in annoyance, feeling irritated as El laughed beside him. By the time they got to the school, Holly’s crying had calmed down at El’s gentle touch. Mike parked the car in front of the school and got out, opening the door for Holly and getting her things.

“Stay here,” he told El. 

“Where else would I go,” she said, before putting the car window down. “Bye, Holly! Good luck at school!”

“Bye, El,” Holly replied, a small smile on her face as she turned to wave to the older girl in the car. She held onto Mike’s hands and they made their way into the office.

There was an older woman sitting down as the secretary, and Mike went to her to check in Holly.

“Excuse me,” Mike said, clearing his throat so that the secretary would look up from her files to look at him. “My little sister is late to school but she’s hearing so I’m here to tell you.”

“Name of the teacher,” the secretary asked, going back to the file cabinet.

“Miss Roberts,” Holly spoke up. “But please don’t mark me tardy!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the secretary said. “You were here late. I have to mark your attendance accordingly.”

“But it’s not my fault,” Holly whimpered, a sob escaping her mouth. “My brother had his girlfriend stay over and they overslept!”

“She is  _not_  my girlfriend,” Mike rushed in to defend himself, the secretary looking him up and skeptically. He felt a blush form on his cheeks and hurried to push it away. He looked down to where Holly was still holding his hand, crying into his arm, before turning back to look at the woman. “Can you please just excuse her this one time? She’s always had perfect attendance and she’ll never be tardy again.”

“Never ever,” Holly piped up, wiping the tears away.

The secretary stared at the both of the him, the exasperation on Mike’s face probably obvious, and she sighed deeply. “Fine,” she whispered to the two of them. She quickly wrote a hall pass for Holly and handed it to the little girl, giving a stern look to Mike. “No more excuses about sleepovers with your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my-,” he started but at that point she had turned back to the cabinets to put the file away. He rolled his eyes and bended down at eye level with Holly. “I’ll come pick you up after school, okay?”

She nodded quickly and wrapped her arms around his neck for a quick hug. 

“Thanks, Mike,” she whispered, and then pulled away and went through the doors leading to the classroom lined hallways. He smiled and gave a final thank you to the secretary before jogging out of there to go back to El who was still waiting in the running car. 

She was eating an Eggo went he got back inside, her second one from the looks of it. 

“I thought you would have taken off with my car by now,” he muttered, putting on his seatbelt and putting the car in drive to go back on the road.

“So that you can frame me for car robbery and send me to jail,” she asked, swallowing the piece of waffle she had been chewing. “Not thank you.”

It was quiet in the car between them, El still eating and Mike not knowing what to say. He and El weren’t ones for casual conversation. Instead Mike turned on the radio, a Tears for Fears song playing that would hopefully occupy the five minute drive it took to get the high school. 

He was silent as he thought about how Holly had called El his girlfriend. He didn’t even know why she had thought she was. Max came over all the time, sometimes on her own if there were family issues at her house, and Holly never referred to her as his girlfriend. Mike was still thinking about all of that when El spoke up and interrupted his thoughts, a reminder to pay attention to the road.

“These Eggos were good but they made my mouth really dry,” she commented, popping the final piece of the waffle in her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Princess. Next time I’ll make sure to get you something to drink,” he told her sarcastically, rolling his eyes and turning up the volume of the radio.

“Trust me, there is not going to be a next time.”

At that Mike started sniffling, an act to make it seem like he was beginning to cry. He wiped at his eye with the back of his hand, turning quickly to see El was giving him a concerned look.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that,” he said softly. “That is the best damn thing I’ve heard in my life. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to never have you over again.”

He started laughing as he turned to see her concern fade and turn into anger. Then without warning, she she shoved his right arm, causing him to swerve the car a little. He immediately started screaming, a fact she didn’t seem to care about.

“Do you want to die,” he asked her, his voice angry and probably a bit overdramatic considering there had been no other cars near them.

“Yeah, kind of,” she answered seriously. “It’d get me out of having to be around you.”

“You are more than welcome to walk,” he said coming up to a red light.

“Would that make you happy?”

“Yes, actually. It would.” He turned to look at her, her face turning into a small smile before answering. 

“Well then I’m staying.” She leaned back in the seat, crossing her arms in front of her with a content smile on her face. He gripped the steering wheel even harder, taking a deep breath, and deciding not to press her. He just had to be with her for another two minutes in the car and then he’d get an hour break from her in the classroom where she sat far away from him. Thank God.

He pulled into the school’s parking lot, parking it and locking the door behind them when they got out. As they made their way towards the office for hall passes, she stopped in her tracks.

“Our project,” she exclaimed, as if she had just remembered the sole reason why they were late. 

“Nice job at remembering about it now,” he said under his breath, continuing to walk through the parking lot. “I have it in my backpack.”

“Oh.” She let out a small breath and caught up with him, letting him open the door for her as they went inside the office.

After informing the secretary that they were late, a fact that made her roll her eyes and made Stacy, apparently the office aid for that period, pop her gum and raise her eyebrows at them, they got their passes and they left towards their classroom. Their English class had only started a few minutes ago when they arrived, but they hurried up anyways. 

Mike opened the door for El once more when they reached the classroom, everyone turning their heads from their teacher to them. They both stopped and stared back at their classmates, some of them who had turned to each other and started murmuring things, but Mike coughed and shoved El a little so that they could give their passes to their teacher.

“Mr. Wheeler, Ms. Hopper, nice of you to join us,” she told them, eyeing them up and down, and causing some giggles from the class.  _Why did every adult look them up and down?_

“Sorry we’re late,” Mike told her.

“And your project, if I may ask,” she said, looking over the slips from the office. Mike swung his backpack off a shoulder and opened it up, taking out the book and the mixtape and handing them to her. 

“Take your seats, please, so that class may proceed.”

Mike went to his desk at the front of the classroom and El made her way through the row of desk to sit down in the back. It wasn’t until he was sitting down, hearing his teacher speak to them about the next novel they were going to be reading, that he felt himself relax a little.

El had driven him crazy for the past nineteen hours and now, finally, he could breathe again. 

 

* * *

 

 

El didn’t feel a sense of normalcy again until lunchtime when she saw her friends sitting down at their usual table. 

Unlike every other day where she and Mike were the first ones to arrive at the table, she had been the last one that day because she’d gone to find a vending machine to buy chips and a water, a result from her lack of a packed lunch. But still, she saw fiery red hair and a wide toothed smile and she felt happiness settle inside herself. 

“Hi,” she smiled at all of them, taking her spot next to Lucas and in front of Will. They all looked at her with amused smiles on their faces. All except for Mike, but that was a given. She stared at them questioningly, taking a hand to wipe at her face, scared that she had smudged lip gloss or mascara. “What,” she asked them.

“Hey, guys,” Dustin said, a shit-eating grin on his face as he turned his attention away from El and to the rest of the group. “Am I the only one who thinks that El’s sweater looks  _oddly_ familiar?”

“Why yes, Dustin,” Lucas said playing along. “I do believe we’ve seen that sweater before somewhere.”

“I knew I wasn’t the only one who recognized it,” Will added.

“Maybe it was in a Sears catalog,” Max suggested jokingly, raising her eyebrows at El. “Ellie, where did you get that sweater?”

She looked across the table at Mike, who even with his head down, had an obvious blush on his face. She gulped as she felt a similar red hue spreading onto her own, but averted her attention back to Max.

“Mike is letting me borrow it,” she told her friend, trying to keep her expression as nonchalant as possible even though her insides were bursting at the seams with mortification. 

She honestly hadn’t thought anybody would recognize the sweater. After calling her dad in the morning, a telephone conversation which had brought her tears, she wanted something to cheer her up and serve as a distraction. Seeing the ugly sweater from Mike’s yearbook picture in his closet immediately made her smile and she couldn’t resist putting it on. When she had gone into the bathroom to change, she kind of admired the way it looked on her, the oversized warmth an added bonus. But now, having her friends looking at her and Mike with mischievous smirks and gleams in their eyes, she was starting to regret it.  

“Did he have the sweater with him here at school,” Will asked innocently, laughing a little at El’s face, growing more desperate to end the conversation by the minute.

“Yeah, did you stain your shirt or something,” Max asked her. “I can let you borrow mine if you want-.”

“She slept over last night,” Mike interrupted. “Now can we please drop it?”

The table was quiet for a moment, El having hidden her face in her hands at Mike’s outburst, but then Dustin started laughing so hard he was choking, the rest of them joining in with him. 

“Oh my god,” he said in between bursts of laughter. “You and El had a  _sleepover_?!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure they did much sleeping,” Lucas teased, the other three prompting a synched “OH!” as Dustin leaned over to high-five Lucas. 

“Gross,” Mike yelled, while El wrinkled her nose in disgust at them.

“What happened to you two hating each other,” Will said his laughter dying down but then picking up again at the sight of Mike’s unamused face.

“It was a facade, Byers,” Max smirked. “Everyone knew that.”

“No one knew that,” Mike jumped in, before shaking his head at his wording. “I mean no one knows that because it’s not true. It’s just...it’s not...I’m done talking.”

“I slept over on accident last night,” El went to clarify. Usually she would have enjoyed watching Mike flop like a fish out of water, all gaping mouth and wide eyes, but he was making it worse than it seemed. “We were at his house to work on the project, we both ended up oversleeping, and I borrowed this sweater because I didn’t want to come to school in my smelly shirt from yesterday.”

“Aww, El, no,” Dustin exclaimed. “I was just going to come up with theories about what happened at your sleepover and you just ruined the mystery!”

She gave a very unapologetic “whoops” and took a bite out of one of her chips when Max spoke up.

“Wait. So the chief let you stay over last night,” she asked, leaning over the table to look at her, her eyebrows raised.

El shook her head no, looking back down at her lap. She’d been avoiding thinking about it.

“I was supposed to go back home before school. But...” She trailed off. They already knew what had happened since she had explained it to them.

“I’d hate to have the police chief as my dad,” Lucas commented, receiving a punch in the arm from Max that he winced at.

“Good luck, El,” Will told her earnestly, giving her a small smile that she couldn’t help but return.

They were all scared of Jim, his tall stature and gruff demeanor doing him no favors for appearing as a friendly person. But having lived with him for more than three years, she knew he wasn’t scary at all. It still didn’t stop her from feeling worried to see him after school. 

The rest of the lunch period was occupied with the sounds of Dustin and Lucas arguing over a certain comic book plot line, the ring signaling the end of the period causing it to stop. El picked up her trash, catching Mike looking at her before he quickly turned away and started walking away to his class. She ignored it, going to Max as the redhead slung her arm over her shoulder and pulled her close to her so they could walk to class together. 

Once they got out of the cafeteria and started walking in the herd of other students making their way to their classes, Max giggled a little and then asked El something that made her feet trip over themselves.

“Do you like Mike?”

“What,” El asked, looking around to the other students before getting closer to Max. “No!”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s just that you’re wearing his sweater and you liked him before-.”

“Yeah, before I found out he was a gigantic jerk.” Max looked her at unsure and El gave in. “If we lived in some alternate universe where Mike wasn’t a dick and he treated me kindly, then yeah, maybe I would have a crush on him. But we don’t. We live in this universe, and in this universe, he’s the worst.”

“He’s not the  _worst_.”

El laughed as Max looked at her with a small smile and bumped her hip with hers. They were quiet on the way to the classroom, until they sat down at the desks beside each other and El added another thought quietly.

“And besides, even  _if_ I did like him, he still hates me.”

Max leaned in to El and just as quietly responded, “I don’t think that’s true.”

El was about to open to her mouth to respond, to tell her that she knew for a fact that Mike hated her. She’d heard him say so months ago. It was why he was always annoying her. But the final bell rang above them, and the teacher started welcoming the class, so she didn’t get the chance to. 

She spent the last couple hours of school forcing herself to stop thinking about what Max had said about Mike and to try instead to think about what she was going to tell her dad when he picked her up after school. When she had run downstairs to call him, he had answered on the first ring and it made her stomach drop at the way his voice sounded when he said, “El?”

She had quickly rushed in to apologize, already feeling tears in her eyes even though he hadn’t said anything, and said how she was sorry she hadn’t gone home or called. He started yelling about how worried he had been when he’d woken up and she wasn’t there, how he had called the school and they’d told him she hadn’t shown up that morning. And then his anger had subsided and had been replaced by a disappointed sounding, “I trusted you, kid.” And disappointment had always been worse than anger. He told her that they’d talk about it after school, and she had rushed in an “I love you,” hearing him mumble it back before he hung up on her. Even thinking about it then made her want to cry. 

She had spent her entire life in and out of foster and group houses, her mother having given her up at birth. And they weren’t particularly bad living situations, never having been abused or neglected of clothes or food. They just weren’t  _home._

But when she had met Jim, a cop who had come into the house she had been living in at the time to break up a dispute between her foster parents, something had just clicked. He had to take her and her foster siblings away from that house, but when he saw how badly she didn’t want to go back to the group house, he’d offered to be her foster parent. 

Jim had adopted her after a year of fostering, during which she was still homeschooled. She’d been homeschooled her entire life, never having liked the idea of making friends when she was constantly moving from school to school. There were issues with coworkers at his department and the long hours he stayed away from her also made his job in the city uncertain, and made El hesitant to start going to public school. Finally, he’d moved them back to his hometown of Hawkins as the police chief and had offered El stability and safety and family. She had been assured by him that she could go to school and make friends because they weren’t going anywhere. 

Of course Jim and El argued sometimes, every father and daughter do, but she had always tried to be the best daughter she could be to him. He was certainly the best father he could be to her. Hearing him disappointed in her, hurt her more than she cared to admit. 

When the final bell at the end of the day dismissed the students for the weekend, El spent longer than usual packing her things up in her backpack. She practically dragged her feet to her locker as she grabbed the textbooks she needed for homework and then out the front doors of the school. She took a deep sigh when she saw her dad waiting in his truck to pick her up, mentally preparing herself not to cry and to just calmly explain things to him.

She walked towards him, already noticing the angry expression on his face through the window even before she opened the door to the passenger seat.

“Hi,” she greeted meekly, closing the door and putting on her seatbelt, all the meanwhile ignoring his face. She just wasn’t ready to face him and have him tell her again how upset she’d made him. And she knew he was still looking at her, felt his gaze burning her, but then a sudden tapping on the window made them look up.

“Jesus,” Jim yelled, looking to his left where Mike was standing outside his door knocking on the window. El’s heart started to race as she saw it was him, a pressing look on his face as he gesture for Jim to roll down the window of his car. “Can I help you?”

She was so, so nervous that he was going to say something dumb to get her into even more trouble. She knew he’d heard at least some of her tearful conversation with him in the morning, knew that he could easily use it as leverage on her to make her life more miserable. Why wouldn’t he? They had never exactly set boundaries on how far their hatred would go. 

“I’m Mike Wheeler,” he said, stretching his hand out to shake Jim’s. It was then she was noticing that he looked out of breath, his voice panting. “I just came to apologize for last night.”

_...What?_

She couldn’t have possibly heard him correctly. There was no way that Michael Wheeler would have showed up just to apologize to her dad. 

“I was supposed to give her a ride back home when we finished with our project and I ended up falling asleep. The only reason she ended up falling asleep was because she wanted to take a quick nap before walking herself home so that she wouldn’t fall asleep. It’s my fault and I’m sorry.” 

He ended his rant, an apologetic look on his face that made El confused for two reasons. The first was why he had come to take the blame for her. The second was why her heart was twisting the same way it had when she had first met him.

Jim looked from Mike to El. “Is this true?”

She looked at the boy behind him, his eyes going wide as if telling her not to be an idiot and just agree.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I didn’t want to wake him and his little sister up and I just...fell asleep.”

He sighed and turned back to Mike, who had quickly returned his facial expression to the remorseful one he had when he had spoken to him. 

“Alright, Mike,” Jim said dejectedly. “Thank you for coming out to tell me this. I appreciate it. As I’m sure El does, too.”

She stayed quiet because she wasn’t sure exactly if she did appreciate it. To be honest, she still couldn’t believe it had happened.

“No problem, sir,” Mike smiled softly. “I should get going, though. I have to pick up my little sister from school. It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” the older man said, closing the window as Mike began to walk away. He had went around the back of the truck and when El had turned back to look at him as Jim started driving away, he was standing back on the sidewalk, staring at her with an unreadable look on his face. 

“Well, he didn’t seem like the asshole you described him to be,” Hopper spoke up. “Even though he is a liar, a bad one at that.”

“Dad-,” she started, but he put his hand to tell her to stop talking.

“You are grounded for the weekend. That means no junk food, no TV, and no phone. You’re going to stay home and do homework and chores. Is that understood,” he said strictly.

“Yeah.” She nodded and then more softly added, “I’m sorry I worried you so much.”

He turned to look at her, squeezing her shoulder, and she knew then that he wasn’t that mad. 

“I’m just happy you’re okay,” he said. She smiled at him and then noticed a teasing smile on his face. “And I’m also happy to know that I was right about you having a crush on Mike.”

“What,” she shouted, making him start to laugh.

“Kid,” he chuckled. “You should have seen the look on your face when he showed up and started defending you! It was like he was your knight in shining armor or something.”

She groaned, throwing her head back on the seat.  _Maybe that had been Mike’s plan_ , she thought. To embarrass her in front of her dad or make him think she had been lying to him about their mutual hatred. He had been aware after all that her dad had told her not to kill each other.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, as he pulled into their driveway, “I’m pretty sure he likes you, too.”

“He doesn’t. Trust me,” she told him honestly, ignoring the weird feeling in her chest as she grabbed her backpack and went inside her house.

El spent the rest of the evening inside her bedroom, moving from her desk to her bed as she completed homework assignments, only leaving to eat dinner with her dad. As much as she tried to avoid thinking about Mike, and she tried to avoid it a lot, she just couldn’t. 

The conversation he had had with her dad kept playing in her head. Him showing up at the truck outside the school, the sight of his dark eyes and pale skin, as he tried to come up with a lie that put the blame of El’s mistake on him. She never would have thought Mike would do anything nice for her. The nicest he had done so far was cooking dinner for her and letting her borrow his sweater. 

 _His sweater_. She looked down at it, rubbing the material that sat over her chest, a place that was currently stirring up feelings that she couldn’t begin to understand. More than anything, it made her angry. She was not supposed to feel nice things for Mike. She was not supposed to feel grateful. He had been the one to ignite their rivalry, him and his cruel words to her. She knew that. 

But every time her head kept telling her to feel hatred, she felt her heart tug at her as a reminder that it existed too. 

What she wanted more than anything was to talk to Max. She wanted to talk to her best friend about what had happened between Mike and her dad after school, to see if she had any other theories for his motives that she hadn’t thought of. And she wanted, secretly, to ask her why she thought Mike didn’t hate her. Because maybe there was something that she wasn’t seeing. Maybe, by some miracle, she was in the universe where he could be nice to her. 

The whole situation that afternoon had tilted her perspective of Mike on its axis. A small tilt, but a tilt nonetheless. 

It was that change that had her change back into Mike’s borrowed sweater even after she showered and put on pajamas. It was that change that had her staring at the empty right side of her bed when she laid down to go to sleep, missing the way that only hours ago she had fallen asleep next to midnight hair and freckles. It was that change that for the first time in a while, made her want to talk to him.

To ask him what the  _fuck_ was going on. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you are all INCREDIBLE!!! i honestly have no idea what i did to deserve all the support i've gotten so far but i love it and every time i read a nice comment i honestly get little butterflies and start blushing and aaahh!! i have crushes on all of you!!! (sound familiar?)
> 
> i hope you guys liked this chapter, thank you for patience, and i will try to update the next chapter asap because, wowza, is it gonna be angsty !!!


	4. cue the patsy cline music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El talk about a few things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick psa: chapters will be added on fridays :)

Mike had thought the most surprising part of his day was going to be waking up to El Hopper that morning. 

The feelings he had experienced while staring at her weren’t surprising. They were heartbeat skips and butterflies that had only resurfaced after months of him trying to suppress them. Not that El made it all that difficult for him to do so since every interaction with her was an argumentative disaster that gave way to a headache.

But even then, he couldn’t get the image of her from that morning away from his mind. The sunlight peering in from the window made it looked like she had been adorned with a halo. She looked like an angel had fallen and landed itself next to him in his bedroom, all soft skin and pink lips only a breath away.

And then Mike reminded himself that Satan had been an angel, too. 

It’s what he was thinking about when Max showed up to their class, the first of the two they had together, and she slammed her textbooks on the desk next to his, interrupting his thoughts.

“We need to talk,” she told him matter-of-factly, bending down to take her seat.

“About what,” he asked.

“El.”

He immediately felt his cheeks redden. _Oh my god, is she able to tell that I was was thinking about her_ , he thought. _Is she a mind reader?_

“And why would I want to talk about her,” he asked, trying to avert his gaze to bring his face back to its usual pale shade.

She leaned over her desk, making him look at her, and kept her eyes on his as she told him steadily, “Because I think you like her.”

“W-what,” he stuttered, his voice unintentionally loud and causing the other student shuffling into the classroom to look at him. He exhaled and tried again, asking her again more calmly with his voice in a whisper. “Why would you think I like her?”

She was quiet for a while, looking back and forth between his eyes, her expression serious and understanding.

“You do like her, don’t you,” she said slowly. It was more of a statement than a question.

“You know we hate each other,” he said dismissively.

“Do I know that?”

“Yes!” Mike let out an exasperated laugh, running his fingers through his hair quickly, unkempt since he’d only done that to it that morning, too. Max was still looking at him seriously, as if she was waiting for something and he sighed. “Look, it’s just a fact, okay? It’s one of the laws of the universe: we pay taxes, we die, El and I hate each other.”

“I saw the way you guys looked at each other,” she said, her blue eyes wide and sparkling. “I’ve  _seen_  how you guys have looked at each other. And trust me, there is no hate there.”

He stayed quiet, his fingers fiddling with each other. He didn’t want to look at Max, didn’t want to hear what she was saying. It made something twist in his chest; not like a knife, it didn’t hurt. But it didn’t feel good either. It was like there had been a cork screw in place, holding in his feelings, and Max had come and taken it off. Now he was exposed, his feelings released, and he didn’t like it. 

When he finally did turn to his side to look at her again, he found that her gaze was still on his. She looked sympathetic. Maybe even a little guilty. It was like she knew what she had done. What she had opened. 

“El and I don’t like each other,” he said, a final attempt at trying to close the conversation. 

“She’s wearing your sweater,” she reasoned, a hint of teasing in her voice.

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“So you didn’t feel any certain way seeing her all day in your clothes,” she asked him.

“It’s just clothes,” Mike shrugged, trying not to give into whatever exactly Max was trying to get from him.

“You didn’t think she looked especially cute wearing your nerdy ass sweater from the eighth grade? Didn’t feel your comic book loving heart beat a little harder at the thought of her wearing something that’s yours? Of having a piece of you with her for the whole day?”

He felt his heart beat faster as she talked about El wearing his sweater.  _Had El thought about all the same things Max was saying? Was there a part of her that warmed too at the idea of having something of his, wearing something his, the whole day?_

“No.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t think she looked especially cute wearing my sweater.”

Her eyes widened even more, a smile growing on her face.

“Wait so you think she looks cute all the time?”

“She’s pretty.” He said it straightforward, shrugging once again.

“So you do like her,” Max said excitedly.

“I hate her, but I’m not blind.”

It wasn’t a secret. El Hopper was beautiful. She had hair that fell past her shoulders in wild brown curls and eyes wide and deep enough to trap a person. She had a perfectly sloped nose that most girls in their grade probably dreamed about their dad buying for them and forever pink tinted lips that gave way to a charming smile. So yes, Mike was very well aware of how attractive El was.

He had his chin in the palm of his hand as his elbow rested on his desk and he thought about this. But then he felt eyes staring at him and he turned to see that Max was still looking at him, her mouth open into an astonished smile.

“What?”

“You’re so in love with her.”

He groaned and she flipped her long red tresses over her shoulder before crossing her arms in front of her chest. 

“It doesn’t matter anyways,” she said, a little disappointingly. “El is probably going to be grounded for life so there’s no way she’s going to be able to date.”

At that Mike drew his attention back to her. “What do you mean?”

She opened her mouth to respond but the bell ringing above them interrupted her and their teacher began telling them to quiet down so that he could begin teaching. The fifty minute lecture seemed to drag on as Mike waited impatiently for them to be released so Max could explain what she had meant about El being possibly grounded for life.

When they finally were let go, he started the conversation with Max again as they walked down the hallways to their last class of the day.

“Okay, why did you say El was going to be grounded for life,” he asked her, leaning closer to her as they managed their way through all the other students.

“Because,” she started. “I don’t know how strict her dad is, but he’s the police chief so that probably means he won’t go soft on her. And she looked really worried during lunch and class.”

Mike felt his stomach drop, remembering himself just how pale she had gotten at the mention of her dad. She honestly hadn’t looked okay and he was scared if he took his eyes off of her that she would disappear, but then she left to walk with Max.

“Well I mean,” he began to rationalize. “She must have gotten in trouble with him before and she’s fine.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Max said. “El and her dad have never gotten into a real argument before. He…”

And then she began to trail off, looking at him worriedly, and shaking her head to stop herself.

“What,” he asked her, grabbing her by the arm to stop her from taking another step. She stared up at him, contemplation written all over her face as she began biting on her lip and her eyebrows slanted. She exhaled and pulled him closer to their classroom until they were pressed up against the lockers right outside of it.

“El used to live in really shitty foster homes,” Max whispered to him. His back straightened up at that.  _What?_ “She was always moving around because people didn’t want her, I guess. It’s why she was homeschooled her whole life and keeps to herself. And the chief saved her basically when he adopted her and she just gets really nervous about disappointing him because of that.”

“And that’s why they’ve never argued,” he started to say slowly in understanding, “Because she makes sure she never disappoints him.”

“Exactly,” Max said. The bell rung through the speakers but they both ignored it that time. “She doesn’t know what exactly is going to happen. I think she’s scared he might not want her…I don’t know. I never know what’s going on in her head.”

Mike felt his heart begin racing as his entire being was filled with guilt and worry. He had never known about the foster homes or her adoption. It had just been accepted that there was a new police chief in Hawkins who was the single father of a teenage daughter. There hadn’t been any rumors or hints. 

Only now that Mike was considering it, it explained why she had been so closed off to him when she met him. It was her first day of actual school in her entire life. She had probably been beyond nervous and then she bumped into him and probably thought he would hate her or something because she had left him alone without saying a word to him. Because she had disappointed him.

_Except she hadn’t_ , he counter-argued himself. He would never forget when he saw her for the first time, looking down at him with flushed cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. It had been a moment that blurred everything surrounding him and put her in focus. It muted the rest of the world, silencing every single sound in anticipation for her to speak, but she never did. 

She left and left and left, leaving nothing but silence in her tracks, until the day she didn’t. Until the day she spoke to him for the first time and cemented their relationship. Mike had been waiting to hear the words that would start a friendship, a potential relationship if he was ever able to convince her to take a chance on him, but the words had fired through the air instead like gunshots.

“Are you okay,” Max asked him, waving her hand in front of his face and taking him out of his daze.

“Yeah,” he coughed. “Let’s just go to class.”

She nodded and opened the door, the both of them slipping into the classroom and heading to their desks near the back of the class, avoiding the gaze of their teacher who had already been teaching a lesson. Mike quickly took out his notebook and turned it to the next empty page, ready to learn about whatever they were going to be taught that day in Chemistry. 

He liked science. He liked that it was systematic and built on proven theories and concepts. It was created by questions people had about the universe, but more than anything, it provided answers. Which was what he so desperately needed- answers.

His mind kept going back to El, to the way she had looked at him with her tear stained face in the morning and how sad she seemed during lunch. It went back to her shaky voice and the way she she tapped absentmindedly on the lunch table. It went back to her. Always her.

As much as he liked to get her angry, he realized then that he  _really_  didn’t like to see her sad. His stomach twisted as he thought about what Max had said about her life, about being in a lot of foster homes, and he thought about how El must have often been sad. And it hurt him to think that maybe he had made her sad at one point or another, the unsettling feeling in his stomach growing. 

Even at the idea of possibly having made her sad at some point, him, her archenemy basically, he felt wrong. She was a lot of things, annoying and ill-mannered and controlling and implacable, but that didn’t mean she deserved to be unhappy. El was smart and pretty and funny and valiant and nice to his sister and she smelled like cherries and she had received a standing ovation three nights in row when she was in the spring musical.

Max had said, “people didn’t want her” but he didn’t understand.

_How could anybody not want El Hopper?_

And then he thought,  _I want El Hopper._

Before he could even argue with himself, he let his thought, his feeling, absorb into him and he accepted it as if it was part of his DNA. It was as if he was barely realizing his genetic code was telling him that he liked El, he had always liked El, and he probably always would because he was meant to. His biological makeup was what made him blush at the sight of her and angry at her ignoring him and awed at the power of her words. His feelings for her were engrained in his bones and flowed in his veins and he knew he was meant to always like her.

And maybe she would never like him back, but damn it if he was going to see the girl he liked be unhappy. 

He looked at the clock in the classroom and noticed that there was only a minute left for the dismissal bell. So he began to gather his things, looking down at his notebook and noticing he hadn’t even written anything the entire period, and put them in his backpack. His leg bounced up and down in anticipation of the sound of bell, usually overly obnoxious and loud, but when he heard it then only came across as a melodious signal telling him to leave.

He grabbed his backpack and swung it over his shoulder, rushing out of the classroom. He heard Max yell behind him, but he didn’t stop. They were on the other end of the campus and he wanted to get to El before she left to tell her that he would take the blame for her. Knowing her she probably wouldn’t let him, but he had to at least try and see if that would calm her down. 

Mike ran through the hallways, pushing through people and ignoring the shouts of “asshole!” and “dick!” that followed as he went past them. He couldn’t care about that then, he just needed to see El. 

By the time he made it to the front of the school, out of breath and shaky, he saw that El was descending the steps toward the Hawkins Police Department truck. 

“Shit,” he muttered. He ran down the steps, going around the back of the truck, and knocked on the window of the driver’s side. The man inside, her dad, jumped in his seat a little but he didn’t have the energy to laugh, still out of breath from running and now a little nervous because he had no idea what he was going to tell him.

He was able to make up the lie on the spot, about how it was his fault because El had asked him to give her a ride home after their project but he had fallen asleep. Mike tried to steady his eyes on the chief but his gaze kept going to El, her facial expression a mixture of surprise and confusion. 

He widened his eyes and nodded slowly so that she understood his gesture, and to his relief she agreed with him. The chief thanked him and he went around the truck, back onto the sidewalk to avoid the moving cars.

El looked behind her shoulder to look at him and his eyes met hers. He wanted to smile at her, but he couldn’t. All that was going through his mind was a prayer that his efforts worked, El was more calm, and her dad didn’t majorly punish her. 

As he walked back inside the school to grab books he needed from his locker, he finally gave into a tiny smile. Never in a million years had he thought he would stand up for El. That morning he would have even thanked and shaken the hand of whoever dared go against her. But now it had been hours later and he’d just ran the fastest he ever had before in an attempt to save her.

And that, Mike thought, was going to be the most surprising part of his day. Maybe even his life.

He spent the rest of the weekend thinking about her, from the moment he arrived home on Friday to the time he went to bed on Sunday. He was hoping she was okay, the desperation from wanting to know if she was was eating at him. It almost drove him to ask Max for her phone number so he could call her. He talked himself out of it though because one, he didn’t want Max to pester him with any more questions about El, and two, he didn’t want El to think he was a creep for calling her at home. 

So he kept busy as a distraction, asking his parents how his dad’s business trip had gone and watching cartoons with Holly and completing homework assignments, but the second he lost the least amount of focus his mind wandered back to El. He just needed to see her again, to know she was okay and fully prepared to resume their rivalry if she so wanted. If that made her happy.

On Monday he was at his locker, thinking about what he was going to say to El when he saw her later that day, when like a prayer (or damnation, however this was going to go), he heard her voice at his side.

“Here’s your stupid sweater and your tube socks.”

He looked down and saw El standing there, his breath catching at the sight of her in a soft pink sweater that exposed the sweep of her collarbones. Her hair was pushed behind her shoulders, her curls looking a lot more tamed than they had on Friday. She looked so cute and it was just registering through his mind that it was the first time he was allowing himself to admire her while she was in front of him and conscious.

“I washed them both for you,” she continued, extending the folded sweater and socks out to him.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he told her, taking them from her but still not looking away from her. 

“Yes I did, they reeked,” she deadpanned and he felt a spark in him. It was the familiarity of their back-and-forth and a sly smile appeared on his face naturally. 

“You would know,” he told her, his face just as serious as hers. “Considering you’re literally the only girl I know who smells bad,” 

“More like ‘you’re literally the only girl I know’, period,” she retorted. “No other girl has ever gotten within three feet of you.”

“Yet another thing you’re wrong about.”

“What else I have been wrong about,” she asked offended, her arms crossed in front of her and her eyebrows raised in a challenge.

“A lot of things, actually. When you said the ‘whom’ I wrote in my sentence was used incorrectly-.”

“It was.”

“When you said Daisy Buchanan was unfairly vilified-.”

“She’s not a villain for wanting a nice life and stability!”

“More recently though,” he continued. “The need to return the sweater and socks to me. You could have just kept them.”

“Why would I want to keep your ugly sweater?”

“Because it’s small and dorky,” he said in false admiration, the teasing evident in his voice. “Just like you! It fits you so well.”

He grabbed the sweater by the shoulders and held it up against El’s frame, laughing at the annoyance on her face until she grabbed it and threw it back at his face.

“You’re an asshole,” she told him, something that only made him laugh harder.

“You could have at least kept the socks,” he said, his laughter dying down. He folded the sweater back up and put it in his locker with the socks before closing it up. He leaned against it and looked down at her leaning against a locker, too. “I’ve heard I have more than anybody else.”

A blush crept onto her face, making her tanned skin turn into the brightest shade of pink and he felt his heart beat faster at the sight of it. He’d made her blush and had caused the hint of a smile and it made him want to do it again and again.

“It’s fine,” she said, finally meeting his gaze again. “Keep them.”

At the silence that fell between them, Mike decided to ask her the question that had been lingering on his mind since Friday after school.

“So you’re not grounded for life?”

“No,” she answered, though she made it sound like a question. Her eyebrows furrowed. “Why?”

_Because Max said you might be and I wanted to make sure you would be able to go out if I asked you to,_ he thought immediately. 

“You just seemed a little…worried on Friday with your dad,” he decided on. Her face shifted a little and he immediately got worried that something bad had happened after he had left them. 

“Can we talk about that actually,” she asked him slowly, her voice filled with uncertainty. She had only gotten through asking him the question when the morning bell rang.

“Maybe later,” he suggested, upset that they hadn’t gotten the opportunity to talk about what he had so desperately wanted to talk about since Friday. She had probably been curious about it all weekend and he wanted to let her know that he wanted to be friends. Maybe eventually, even more, but for now he could settle for friendship. 

“Okay,” she smiled disappointedly, a small shrug of her shoulder. “Sure.”

He didn’t know what else to say. They weren’t the type of people to greet or say goodbye to each other. They hadn’t even been the type of people to talk to each other.

He settled for an “Alright, bye” and a wave of his hand as he walked away from her and then immediately cursed himself for it.  _“Alright bye?” He couldn’t have come up with something better, or let her walk away from him first, or offered to walk her to class? This is why El hated him._

Mike sat down at his desk in the center of the classroom he had first period, grabbing the materials he needed from his backpack when he saw someone sit down on his desk. When he looked up he saw Connor, one of the more popular people from his school, grinning at him.

“Can I help you,” Mike asked, trying to make it clear he was in no mood to talk to anyone, wanting nothing but to self-loathe for a bit more. 

“I heard you got a girlfriend, Wheeler,” he smirked, putting his fist bump up for Mike to return the gesture but he ignored it.

“No I don’t,” Mike asked confused. There was only one girl who he would ever want as his girlfriend and she currently wasn’t.

“That’s not what everyone is saying,” Connor smiled even wider, pushing himself off the desk and leaning so that his elbows were on its surface instead.

“And what is everyone saying?”

“That you and the chief’s daughter have been having some ‘tension’ for a while and you both finally decided to get rid of it last week,” he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and Mike felt his stomach drop.

_What?_

“What,” Mike exclaimed. “Where did you hear that?!”

“I told you, Wheeler! Everyone is talking about it! Stacey said she saw you and El Hopper come in late to school on Friday and that you both had crazy sex hair and were out of breath and shit. And then she was wearing your sweater?! My man!”

He put his fist up again, but again Mike rejected it. His mind wasn’t anywhere near the proximity of giving or receiving congratulatory gestures from douchebags. 

Mike was only focused on the fact that there were apparently rumors about him and El being in a relationship, along with other implications he did not want to think about if he wanted to avoid turning red. He didn’t know what to do or think in the situation. Rumors being spread about him was never something he had ever worried about because he wasn’t popular enough to receive them.

One thing was for certain though: El was  _not_ going to like them.

* * *

All weekend she had only thought about Mike. 

His stupid hair that fell into his eyes sometimes and his dumb dark eyes and his carelessly scattered freckles that seemed to boast their supposed cuteness to anyone who looked their way. It was all El saw when she closed her eyes or when she stared blankly at the same page she had had her textbook opened to for the past twenty minutes. In her mind she kept replaying his scene of chivalry, but the more she did so, the more confused she got.

She wanted nothing more than to talk to him, her desperation leading her to countdown the hours until she would be at school on Monday. When the weekday had arrived, she had even managed to get her dad to drop her off earlier than usual. Normally she would arrive at school with only a minute to spare before the bell, but that day she had told her dad she needed to talk to a teacher before class. He had eyed her suspiciously before rolling his eyes and driving her to school. 

When she got there she was practically running through the halls to find Mike. She looked frantically at all the other students until she saw sight of him at his locker. Stupid hair, dumb dark eyes, careless freckles. Except now that she was looking at him, she kind of realized how nice and wavy it had gotten recently and how his eyes seemed to magnetize anybody into a conversation and his freckles weren’t so much careless as they were carefully strategized stars to plot constellations. 

And that was when she had finally felt nervous. She had waited three days to speak with him and now he was only a few feet away from her and she felt all of her bravery go away. It had never happened before with him. His opinion of her was always the least of concern, but she suddenly felt worried about her hair and breath and she looked down at the navy skirt that brushed against her knees to make sure that it looked fine. 

But then again, this was brand new territory. He had never been kind to her and he was now. Or he had been once. Their relationship had never diverged into anything friendly and as of Friday, it seemed as though he had tried to make a change. Unless, of course, her theory of him using his “selflessness” wasn’t actually selflessness so much as it was him planning embarrassment, or blackmail, or manipulation.

A part of her had tried to momentarily forget about those possibilities, but she reminded herself who she was dealing with. The Mike Wheeler she saw Friday was not the same one she had known for the past months and she decided to use his past treatment of her as an anchor for her nerves. She would not let her feelings get away from her.

So with a deep breath, she began to walk towards him. She managed to get his sweater and socks out of her backpack without having to take it off and had it ready in her hands. He was still rummaging through his locker when she got to him, not having noticed her presence.

_What an idiot_ , she thought.  _A cute idiot but that’s not the point-_.

“Here’s your stupid sweater and your tube socks,” she said loudly, an attempt to shut up her thoughts. She had to remind herself that she was not allowed to think nice things about Mike until she knew for certain that he wasn’t an asshole anymore. “I washed them both for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he told her, taking them from her. The way he was looking at her made it especially hard for the rational part of her brain to start working. If he had ever looked at her that way before, she hadn’t noticed. Which was good considering she literally felt like she had forgotten her entire vocabulary. No normal girl could function properly while being looked at like  _that_. 

“Yes I did, they reeked,” she told him. It was the first thought that had popped into her head, which was of course a lie. The sweater had smelled like detergent and cinnamon and something else she couldn’t quite place but when she closed her eyes she thought of a bonfire under a sky swallowed up by stars. It had actually made her a little sad to throw it in the wash and get rid of its scent.

“You would know considering you’re literally the only girl I know who smells bad,” he said back and she felt a little relief that he wasn’t offended and chose to insult her back.

And they did their back and forth, El feeling fine and calm at the normalcy, until Mike took his sweater and put it against her. His fingertips were barely brushing against her shoulder and he was looking down at her with a goofy grin on his face and his laughter vibrating through the hallways and she felt like she could melt right there.

Instead she chose to grab it from him and throw it in his face.

“You’re an asshole,” she said, and she meant it. He was an asshole for being mean to her and suddenly deciding not to be. He was an asshole for confusing her. He was an asshole for being so cute and making her feel like she did, no matter how many times she told herself not to. 

“You could have at least kept the socks. I’ve heard I have more than anybody else,” he smiled.

Her face immediately erupted into a blush. She knew it because she felt the heat on her face and her heart was thumping in a crazy pattern and she was happy she was leaning against a wall or else she might have just fallen. He had just made fun of himself with the same insult she had used on Friday and it made her inexplicably happy that he had remembered. 

“It’s fine. Keep them,” she told him, trying to make her voice seem as nonchalant as possible. She knew he didn’t like her, she wasn’t even a hundred percent certain she liked him, but she knew she wouldn’t mind staying in silence with him for a little while longer. 

So of course, he ruined it.

“So you’re not grounded for life,” he asked her, the question throwing her off guard.

“No. Why?”

“You just seemed a little…worried on Friday with your dad.”

_Had he been worried about her?_  The thought about him caring about her seemed a little too good to be true. He had never showed thoughtfulness for her before then. But yet there he was, standing in front of her with patient eyes and a wistful look on his face, and she knew she couldn’t delay the conversation they needed to have.

“Can we talk about that actually,” she asked, the bell ringing above them. She tried hard not to roll her eyes at the annoying sound, it always seemingly showing up solely to ruin conversations.

“Maybe later,” he said.

She pushed herself off the locker and gave him a small shrug. “Okay. Sure.”

“Alright, bye,” he said quickly, waving his hand at her and then walking away.

“Umm bye,” she muttered, this time actually rolling her eyes. He hadn’t even let her say a goodbye back before practically running away from her. She couldn’t have been that much of a pain that he felt he had to separate himself from her immediately. 

She walked in the opposite direction, getting to her first period classroom and walking to her usual seat in the back corner. When she got there, however, there were about three other girls standing around it, talking in whispers until they saw her and broke out into huge smiles. 

“What is this,” El asked, dropping her trapper keeper onto the desk’s surface but still standing as she looked at the girls. The three of them, Brenda, Wendy, and Ivy, were all known gossips at Hawkins High. Their high and teased ponytails with matching scrunchies seen together served as an omen that they were about to talk about things that did not involve them.

“We heard you have a boyfriend now, Hopper,” Brenda said, Wendy and Ivy giggling beside her.

“Well you heard wrong,” El stated, trying to end the conversation as quickly as she could. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh, so you’re just messing around with him then,” asked Wendy, her eyebrows raised.

“I didn’t know nerds had it in them to be so loose. I would have sworn he asked you to go steady and wear his pin,” Ivy teased, the other two girls laughing along with her.

“Who the hell are you guys talking about,” El asked, feeling herself getting angry now.

“Mike Wheeler, duh!”

El felt her anger drop and was instead replaced with fear and embarrassment.

“What,” El asked, her throat going dry. “Where did you hear that?”

“Everyone is talking about it! Stacy saw you guys on Friday and said that it looked like you guys had just had sex,” Brenda told her.

Wendy nodded before adding, “Yeah and apparently everyone in your English class agreed that you guys looked suspicious.”

“No we didn’t,” El exclaimed, already making plans to kick everyone’s ass in that class, including her teacher for partnering her up with Mike. “We hate each other.”

“Is that why you guys flirt all the time during class,” Ivy asked, her expression innocent but El knew it was anything but. 

“It’s not flirting!”

“Oh, honey,” she said sympathetically, trying to reach out her hand to put on El’s shoulder but she leaned back.

“Mike and I are not dating,” El said firmly, looking all three girls in the eyes and trying not to let her emotions get the best of her. She was feeling frustrated and angry and embarrassed and she wanted her feelings, all of them to stop. “And we are not having sex. Stacy needs to stop assuming things and apparently so does everybody else in this damn school.” 

She looked at all them, the three of them simultaneously rolling their eyes and huffing before walking to their seats. El sat down to take hers, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. She had never had a rumor spread about her before, and now that she knew what it felt like, she never wanted it to happen again.

She wanted to know how long there had been rumors about her and Mike. She wanted to know how often they had been a topic of conversation, of people saying that they flirted in class. People thought she liked Mike, a feeling that she was barely attempting to come to terms with, and if they thought that…then maybe Mike did, too. Maybe he had already heard the rumors.

_Oh God, he probably has_ , she thought, throwing her face into her hands. People had probably come up to Mike and asked him if they were dating and he probably told him how revolting he found her, how never in a million years would he want El Hopper to be his girlfriend. 

For the rest of the morning she tried not to cry when she noticed other people staring at her in class or in the hallways. She tried not to pay attention to the whispers she heard among students that mentioned her name. But when it came time for her English class, she was not able ignore the look on Mike’s face when he saw her.

When she saw him, their eyes locked on each other, and for the first time she had known him, they didn’t sparkle. They did all the time, when he was happy and laughing, or when he was angry and screaming, but they always shined. And when El looked at him then, they were just black. No passion or magnetism. Just…black.

His lips were slightly parted and she realized that hers were, too but neither of them were saying anything. She heard the whispers of their classmates as they looked at the two of them and then Mike closed his lips and averted his gaze. She took a deep breath, trying not to let it hurt her, understanding that they were just in an awkward situation. She walked to her seat near the back of the classroom, her head held high as she deliberately ignored her classmates.

Class seemed to go painfully slowly. Mike and El, usually the sole contributors to class discussions, were both quiet, neither of them wanting to talk since they were now aware of how others viewed their arguments. No other student answered questions that day either, the teacher giving them confused and pleading looks for the entire hour. 

When the bell had rung for lunch, Mike had left first like always. El watched as he didn’t even spare a glance in her direction, their agreement to talk to each other about Friday seemingly forgotten. She hung back and left the classroom when she saw Max and Lucas walking by, the two of them holding hands as Max talked animatedly about something. 

“Max,” El said, grabbing her by the hand that wasn’t occupied and tugging on it. It made Lucas let out a high pitch scream when she popped out of seemingly nowhere, making her raise her eyebrows at him, but ignored it to talk to Max. “We need to talk.”

“And you couldn’t have just said ‘Hi’ like a normal person,” Lucas yelled, his hand holding on to his chest.

“You’re such a baby,” Max laughed. She kissed his cheek quickly and then squeezed El’s hand, beginning to walk backwards in the opposite direction of the cafeteria. “Tell the boys we won’t be there today.”

“Where are you guys going,” Lucas asked, clearly confused about what had just happened in the past thirty seconds.

“Girl talk,” they said together, turning around to walk normally to the football field. It was where they usually went when they wanted to spend time by themselves so Max could complain about her family and Lucas when she was mad at him, and El could complain about Mike.

They made their way to the very top of the bleachers, the cool metal making them wince when they sat down on it. 

“So who told you about the rumors,” Max asked, having guessed correctly about what El wanted to talk about. She took out her lunch, giving half of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich to El.

“Brenda, Wendy, and Ivy,” El said through gritted teeth, taking an angry bite out of her food.

“Ah,” Max smiled. “The ‘Bitches Without Intelligence.’”

“Max!”

“I’m sorry, El. I know you don’t like it when I call other girls ‘bitches’ but there is no other word in the English language that fits them so perfectly.”

She rolled her eyes at her friend, looking down sadly at her converse shoes. 

“It doesn’t matter, anyways,” she grumbled. “If I didn’t hear it from them I would have heard it from someone else.”

“That’s true,” Max agreed. “I heard it during first period from Eugene Dunn and he’s the biggest dweeb in the school! Dustin and I were shocked that we had to hear about your and Mike’s sexual escapade from someone who didn’t even reach our already low social caliber.”

El groaned, throwing her head back in annoyance while Max just laughed and through her arm around El’s shoulder, pulling her closer to her. She lifted El’s head up, pushing a stray curl away from her face and smiling softly at her.

“Mike saved me on Friday,” El whispered gently. Max’s lips turned downwards in confusion.

“What?”

“On Friday after school,” she started, holding Max’s hands in hers from the need to steady herself somehow. “Mike came to my dad’s truck when he picked me up and he told him that he was the one to blame for why I slept over and he apologized to him. My dad didn’t believe him, but still it was-.”

“He likes you,” Max interrupted, a wide smile on her face as she squeezed her hands and started bouncing. “Oh my god! He likes you  _so_  much!”

“Max, no! He does not like me!”

“Trust me,” Max exclaimed. “He hightailed his ass out of class so fast on Friday I swear he just looked like a blurred string bean running for his life.”

“Max.”

“Naturally I assumed he had to take a shit-.”

“Max!”

“But he went to save you,” she grinned, leaning in to give her a quick hug. “He ran for his life to save  _you_. That boy could not possibly hate you _.”_

“What if he just did that whole charade to blackmail,” she asked. Max looked at her sideways. “What if this is just part of some whole elaborate scheme to humiliate eventually? Or what if he does something and he comes up to me like ‘Hey, remember when I saved you from your dad? You owe me one and I’m going to frame you for arson!’” 

The red head looked at her like she was crazy. 

“You watch too much soap operas.”

El sighed and shook her head. 

“No, Max. You didn’t see the way he looked at me today when I walked into class. It was like…” She stopped herself, not wanting to tell Max about how she had always been observant about the life that Mike held in his eyes and how blank they had been then when he looked at her. “It’s awkward now. Whatever happened Friday was a fluke.”

“Did you ever think that maybe he was awkward because he doesn’t know how you feel about the rumors,” she asked. “And how maybe he feels like you may be the one to not want to talk to him because he thinks you don’t like him back?”

“Well, he’d be right,” El said quickly. “I don’t like him.”

She had taken another bite of her sandwich when she saw an aggravated look on Max’s face. “What?”

“You do like him,” she told her annoyed.

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

“I don’t,” El screamed, putting her sandwich back on the bleacher so that she could list off on her fingers all the reasons why she couldn’t stand Mike. “He’s an asshole. He’s pretentious. He has awful opinions. He’s sings terribly and thinks he’s cute when he does it, which he’s not! He just butchers songs! He called me ‘honey’ and ‘princess’ which I did not care for. He- what?” 

She stopped when she noticed that Max was doubled over, her hands over her mouth and her face red. When she came back up she finally let out a laugh loud enough to fill up the entire football field. 

“You- you,” she said in between bursts of laughter, wiping away tears from her eyes. “You seriously think you hate him!”

“Because I do! He’s my least favorite person in the world.”

“No,” Max said her laughter calming down even though she still had a smile on her face. “He isn’t.” She grabbed El’s hands in hers. “Rumors are only believable if they have some truth to them and Ellie, you and Mike liking each other is the most believable one yet.” 

El tried to look away from her at that, the idea of everyone else knowing about her feelings once again bothering her. She didn’t like that if she liked Mike, _if_ , that everyone else knew about it. The feelings that she had for him felt special. It felt like they were _hers_. But apparently they belonged to everybody. 

“I don’t want to like him,” El said quietly, not even speaking directly to Max. She just wanted it to be out in the world. She did not want to like Michael Wheeler.

“I know, Ellie,” Max said, sympathetically. 

She wrapped her arms around her waist, squeezing her tightly, and let El rest her head on her shoulder. The two of them stayed in that position for the rest of their lunch. El didn’t know what Max was thinking about, looking out onto the clean cut green field, but all she could think about was Mike. Still.

El didn’t see Mike the rest of the day, her afternoon occupied with rehearsal for the school play which she desperately tried to will herself to focus on. That evening she went home and her dad asked her over dinner how school went, and she lied and told him everything was the same as always, even though nothing had been how it was before. 

The next day, she didn’t see Mike until their shared English class, even though whispers of his name seemed to follow her everywhere she went. His eyes were a bit more vibrant when she locked eyes with him entering the classroom. It wasn’t back to normal, but at least it was an improvement. She smiled softly and went to her seat, feeling a bit more hopeful about the situation. 

The rumors weren’t only about her. They were against him, too. They had to be in it together.

Their teacher mentioned that she had their projects graded and ready to turn back, instructing them to get in a single file line with their partner after class so that she could give it back to them. When there was only a minute left a class, she started telling them to get in line and everyone hurried to be first, in a clear rush to go off to lunch. El held back, not wanting to deal with all of her other classmates, and found Mike making his way to the back of the line with her.

“Hey,” he smiled shyly, going to stand next to her.

“Hi,” she smiled back, twirling a stray curl around her fingertips nervously. Out of all the things had changed recently, her being nervous around him had to be what she hated the most.

“What do you think we got on our grade,” he asked her, clearly trying to make conversation as they moved up in the line.

“It better be an ‘A’ for what a pain in the ass this project turned out to be,” she huffed.

“Wow, okay. I’ll make sure to let Holly know you didn’t enjoy her company after all.” He said it offended but when she turned to look up at him he was smiling down at her and she felt one of her own starting to grow. They made it to the front of the line, the rest of their classmates having gone before them, and their teacher smiled at the both of them.

“Congratulations, Mr. Wheeler and Miss Hopper,” she told them, handing them back their book and mixtape. “Really well done. I knew this partnership would work.”

“Thanks,” they told her, both of them trying not to grimace, and walked out of class and into the empty hallway. 

“Holy shit,” Mike exclaimed upon seeing their graded rubric. Their teacher had slipped it into their book and had handed it to him while she had given the mixtape to El.

“Let me see,” El said, trying to reach for the book, but Mike held it up against his head at last minute. 

“Sorry, shortstack! You have to be at least six feet tall to see this thing,” he told her, tsk-ing in false disappointment. 

“Well then in that case you shouldn’t be allowed to see it either,” she insulted back, making another jump for the book even though it was no use.

“I’m six feet tall,” he insisted.

“On a good day?”

“I’ll never show this to you, you know,” he said, opening it up and looking at the grading sheet again. “And knowing you-.”

“You don’t know me.”

“The anticipation will kill you,” he smiled, looking away from the paper to watch her again. “On the second thought, maybe I should just never show it to you.”

“Whatever,” she said, starting to feel annoyed by him. She was walking away when he grabbed her by the wrist and stopped her, the sudden touch feeling like electricity. 

“Here,” he smiled apologetically, extending the paper towards her. She reached for it hesitantly, thinking that he would just pull it away from her again, but he didn’t. He just smiled more gently and then in his eyes she saw it. The sparkle.

She turned the paper over and her eyes scanned the sheet until it landed on their grade:  _This project was obviously completed with a lot of effort and compassion. It is one of the most creative works I’ve seen in all my years of teaching. Well done! A+._

“Holy shit,” El echoed, looking up to see Mike.

“I know,” he said excitedly, putting out his hand so she could high-five it but then making it go higher so she just smacked the air. He looked at her disappointedly. “You make this too easy.”

“I hate you,” she deadpanned.

“Oh yeah,” he asked, following her as she began to walk towards the cafeteria. “Do you hate me enough to not want to go to Benny’s after school?”

That made her stop in her tracks. She didn’t know if she had heard him correctly or if it was her stupid, persistent heart finally catching up to her head and making her hear things. 

“What,” she asked him, turning to look at him.

He looked nervous, his hands fiddling with the straps of his backpacks and his eyes wide and unsure. He licked his lips, an action that immediately drew El’s attention them and made her more nervous, and then he repeated himself shyly. 

“Do you want to go to Benny’s after school to celebrate our grade,” he asked with hesitance. And then with a tiny hint of a smile to sound more convincing, “We can get waffles and I’ll even buy you a drink this time so you won’t be thirsty.”

_He’s so cute_ , her head yelled, even though she tried to play it as cool as possible on the outside.

“Hmm,” she hummed, as if she was trying to contemplate what he was saying. “You did say that you would get me a drink next time.”

“I did say that,” he agreed. “And I always keep my promises.”

As much as she hated him, she didn’t mind to admit it to herself that he seemed like the type of friend who always stayed true to his words. But were they even friends now? It prompted her to ask.

“As friends?”

His smile transformed into a smirk and she knew she had messed up.

“Are you trying to hit on me, Hopper? Because if you are, I must say I’m flattered but-.”

“Stop it,” El said, putting her hand up. “Forget I asked.”

“So is that a yes,” he asked softly, a gentle smile tugging on his lips.

“Yeah,” she smiled, but then quickly added, “I have rehearsal after school today though so-.”

“That’s fine,” he rushed in, still smiling. “I have AV Club. We can just meet out by the bike rack in front of the school.”

“Yeah. Okay,” she nodded.

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

El and Mike walked in the cafeteria, Mike holding the door open for her so she could enter first, and they made their way to the rest of their friends. They looked at them suspiciously, as if something was radiating off of them that provoked questioning, but Max only knowingly smirked. Their lunch went by without any arguing within any of them, everything finally feeling fine for El.

“So Mike,” Max asked her once they were alone and walking to their next class, wiggling her eyebrows at her.

“Shut up,” she muttered, playfully shoving the redhead and trying not to do it again when she pointed out that she was blushing.

The last three class went by smoothly, the butterflies El was feeling from going out (well not  _going out_ , but going out) with Mike keeping her awake and excited. After school during rehearsal her director had even mentioned that she had a lot more energy. By the time it was over it was nearing 5 P.M. and she rushed to a payphone to call her dad and tell him that she was going out to eat.

“Would this be a date with a certain knight in shining armor,” Jim asked her gruffly, but even through the phone she could hear his teasing smile.

“Dad,” she groaned, hiding her face in her hands in embarrassment even though he couldn’t see her.

“I’m kidding,” he laughed. “Have fun and be safe.”

“I will,” she promised. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She hung up the phone and raced towards the front of the entrance where the bike racks were. When she got there she saw the Mike was sitting on the last step, his back towards her while he was writing in a notebook.

“Have you been waiting long,” she asked him, giggling a bit when he whipped his back to look at her. a surprised look on his face.

“You’ve had me dying out here for an hour,” he answered, standing up and stretching his arms out above him before bending back down to grab his backpack.

“Have you really,” El asked, the guilt evident in her voice.

“It’s fine. I don’t mind,” he smiled, his face pink. “Are you ready to go?”

She nodded and followed him to the bike rack.

He started rambling as he unchained his bike. “Sorry I don’t have the car today. It’s my dad’s and he’s back in town so he’s using it. But my bike can fit two people so I think it’ll be okay-.”

“Mike,” she caught him off, laughing at how nervous he’d been. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

He smiled, looking embarrassed about his rambling and then pulled his bike out. He sat down, leaving her room behind him and patting down the empty space.

“Hop on,” he told her.

She swung her leg around on the seat, both of them pressed incredibly close as they sat together. She grabbed onto the sides of his windbreaker put, feeling his warmth through the thin material under her fingertips. He began pedaling away from the school and she pressed her cheek against his shoulder blade. He let out a sharp breath at the action and she had to try hard not to laugh at how his blush reached to the tip of his ears.

Benny’s was a small diner located on the outskirts of town, making the bike ride from school last almost fifteen minutes. Not that El minded, though, particularly enjoying the fact that they were close together. They didn’t say anything to each other on the ride, but she figured that just meant they would have more things to talk about when they got to the diner.

When they finally did reach the run down building, El was beginning to feel nervous. Her butterflies had turned into something twisting at her and she couldn’t seem to push it away, not even when he smiled down at her when they got off of his bike.

They slipped into a booth near the back corner of the room, an unnecessary amount of privacy considering they were the only customers there except for an elderly man sitting at the counter. Benny came by to take their orders, two orders of chocolate chip waffles and vanilla milkshakes, and when he left, an awkward silence loomed.

Mike was playing around with the wrapper of his straw from his glass of water and El was looking off into the empty parking lot through the window.

“So,” El began slowly. “How’s Holly?”

Mike perked up at hearing her starting a conversation, momentarily forgetting the wrapper and leaning up in his seat.

“She’s fine,” he said. “But she misses you a lot. She actually said the other day she wanted you to come over because she needed to tell you about some boy from her class.”

“Why,” she asked him.

“I don’t know. She said she’d mentioned him before.”

El smiled fondly as she remembered the conversation she had had with the little girl over the sink the previous week. The fact that there had been a development in the story with her and the boy who she insisted had a crush on her was cute.

“She’s crazy,” El laughed kindly.

“Yeah,” Mike chuckled along with her. “Almost as crazy as those rumors.”

At that, El stopped laughing even though Mike continued. She felt her heart begin to race at the mention of them, at how he had brought it up.

“Why is that crazy?”

He stopped laughing and looked at her confused. “What?”

“You said the rumors were crazy,” El said calmly, even though she slowly felt like she was losing her patience. “Why are they crazy?”

“Because they’re not true,” Mike said, his voice equally firm as hers.

“Because we would never be together, right,” she asked, her heart racing even more. She knew her voice was rising, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Because I’m annoying and revolting and you’d never be interested in me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about,” he asked her, his voice sounding confused as hers became more frantic. “Of course not!”

“Cut the bullshit, Mike,” she said. “I know you hate me.”

“I don’t!”

“Yes you do! I heard you,” she yelled. By then she heard some clattering in the kitchen, almost having forgotten that they were out in public at a restaurant. “I heard you telling Max exactly how you felt about me. You said that I was annoying and whiny and overrated. I heard you.”

A realization settled on his face, his eyes growing wide as he figured out what she was talking about. Mike visibly winced, trying to lean onto the table to reach for when he realized it. “El, I didn’t mean it like that-.”

“Explain to me why you stood up for me on Friday,” she cut him off, leaning out of his touch. “I want to know why you finally decided you didn’t hate me.”

“I-I,” he fumbled, doing the lip licking thing again, but this time El finding it anything but adorable. “I found out about the foster homes and stuff,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know about them and you seemed so worried about your dad and I thought it would make you feel better if-.”

“I don’t need you to defend me” she spat out, feeling tears brimming in her eyes. “And I especially do not need your pity.”

“Jesus, El! It’s not pity,” he yelled, obviously getting frustrated. 

“What else would you call it?! You found out about my sad story and decided  _then_  that that was the reason you shouldn’t be an ass to me?”

“Oh my god! That’s not what it was,” he groaned, throwing his head in his hands before looking at her again. “You make things so difficult!”

“Yeah,” she asked, her eyebrows raised. “Well you won’t have to worry about it anymore because we’re done.”

She rose up from her seat, ready to go call her dad to pick her up when Mike yelled behind her, “We never even started!”

She stopped in her tracks, her hands rolling up into fists at her side, and without a second thought went outside. She walked up to where his bike was leaning against the brick building, making sure he was seeing her through the window as she picked it up by its handlebars. He got up and ran outside, but by that point she was already on his bike pedaling away.

“What the hell are you doing,” he yelled after her, trying to run and catch up with her but she only pedaled faster.

She still heard him yelling when she let go of one of the handlebars, turning slightly so she could properly flip him off.

She didn’t know what she was doing but she definitely knew what he should.

_You can go fuck yourself, Mike Wheeler._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like people will be mad about this chapter (i am mad too, honestly el and mike write themselves and they’re both BUFFOONS) but i just need to say something really quick
> 
> the support i have gotten from people here and tumblr and twitter (do i get support from other places? idk let me know if i do so i can thank them) … i’ve never had this much open love and support and i know that it’s not for me and it’s for this fic but i just wanted to thank you all regardless. whether you send me an ask or write a comment or post a screenshot, i see it and i see you and i thank you with all of my heart
> 
> people have told me that i make their days better with this fic but you guys make mine with your support so yeah just…thank you, thank you, thank you
> 
> you may now proceed to yell at me in the comments -julia


	5. this isn't the fucking breakfast club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El go to detention.

In hindsight, Mike should have realized that things with El were not going to go well. 

The past sixteen years of his life had been filled with bullying and distant parents and friendships that sometimes felt like they were unthreading from his cautiously woven life, so no, he should not have expected things to go well with the girl of his dreams.

If he was even allowed to call her that. Was the girl of his dreams really someone who started arguments in public and stole his bike? Because of her, it had taken him an hour to walk from the diner to his house, the sky quickly losing its light. Maybe she wasn’t the girl of his dreams, but she was most definitely the girl of his thoughts, constantly controlling and overpowering his head with images of her and the sound of her voice on a constant loop.

Even on the way to his house, his mind kept seeing her in her bright yellow sweater, the sky a hazy hue of oranges and pinks, while she rode away from him on the bike he had been the proud owner of since the seventh grade and gracefully turned around to flip him off.

It was because of her that his mother was pacing back and forth in front of the front door, the first thing he saw when he finally reached his house and opened the door.

“Michael,” Karen exclaimed, throwing her arms around him before quickly getting herself off of him. Her face was angry, he’d seen it enough to know, and she immediately started yelling at him. “Where have you been? You were supposed to be home hours ago! I’ve been worried sick!”

“Sorry,” he mumbled quickly. “It won’t happen again.”

A fact, considering that he was probably never going to go out with El ever again. 

He walked past his mom, ready to go upstairs, but she caught him by the sleeve of his windbreaker jacket.

“No, Michael,” she scolded. “You can’t just go off to your room. Explain to me why you’re home so late.”

His mind immediately tried to come up with a lie to cover up the truth: He had been to his AV Club meeting after school just like he usually did every Tuesday. But when that was over he waited over an hour for El outside, just so he could take her to Benny’s and get publicly dumped before they even started going out. He settled for only the most important bit.

“El stole my bike and I had to walk here from Benny’s,” he answered her. He couldn’t lie about the bike, considering she would definitely notice it was gone and he’d have to ask his dad for a ride to school in the morning.

“El? Who’s El?”

“El’s his girlfriend,” Holly said excitedly, running in from the kitchen with an innocent smile on her face but a mischievous glint in her blue eyes.

“No she isn’t,” Mike tried to clarify, turning to look at his mom who had a surprised look on her face.

“Your girlfriend stole your bike,” Karen asked confused.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he exclaimed, running his finger through his hair out of frustration. “She’s evil incarnate, is what she is!”

“She isn’t evil,” Holly yelled to her defense. “She’s the prettiest girl in the world! And she’s nice and helped me with my homework! And she helped me brush my hair when we were late to school!”

“You two were late to school?!”

Mike and Holly both turned from each other to look at their mother, her hands on her hips and her mouth dropped open.

“Whoops,” Holly whispered, and Mike would have laughed if their mom didn’t look so furious.

“When were you guys late,” she asked them, still looking mad.

“Friday,” Mike winced.

“But it’s okay, Mommy! Because they didn’t mark me as tardy,” Holly tried to explain, a convincing smile on her face but it only made her mom rub at her temples.

“Okay,” Karen breathed before turning to look at Mike. “We will deal with this later.”

“Deal with what?!”

“With the fact that you couldn’t handle responsibility properly,” she said angrily. “I asked three things of you, Michael: to take care of the car, the house, and your sister. And apparently you had your girlfriend over-.”

“She’s not my girlfr-.”

She put her hand up to stop him from talking. “And you made your sister late for school. So yes, we will deal with this later.”

He gulped at how steady and cold her voice sounded. That always scared him more than when she was just screaming.

“For now,” she continued. “We will deal with your bike. Have you called the police?”

“What?! No,” he blurted out, his eyes wide at the idea.

“And why not?”

“Because El’s dad is the chief of police! They’re not going to do shit if I call!”

“Language,” he heard his dad yell someone from the living room.  _Oh good_ , he thought,  _Dad’s here_.

“Well you have to do something, Michael,” his mom said, drawing his attention back to her. “We are not getting you another bike.”

“I didn’t ask for another bike.”

She glared her eyes at him, and quickly pointed up the stairs. “Go to your room.”

“That’s where I was trying to go five minutes ago,” he shot back, rolling his eyes at her before turning back to the stairs to head up. He heard Holly snicker behind him and then his mom yelled at her to go to her room, too.

“I didn’t even do anything,” she whined, stomping her feet up the stairs after Mike. When they reached the top, she grabbed onto his hand and he looked down at her. “Are you and El going to be okay?”

It hurt him to see the sad look on her face. When Nancy was still living in the house, they weren’t that close. The age gap was too wide and while Holly wanted to play around with Ken dolls, Nancy wanted to play around with men that weren’t made out of plastic. He could tell that Holly quickly took to El because as she had said, she was nice to her and helpful and there seemed to be actual conversations between the two of them. He didn’t doubt that the reason Holly was wondering about him and El was because she liked the idea of having a girl around the house more often.

“I don’t know, Holls,” he answered honestly. He wanted to say yes more than anything, to actually, truly know that they were going to be fine, but he felt like he’d messed up. But what he said next was, “I hope so,” and that was the one thing he was sure of. He hoped they would be okay.

“Me too,” Holly sighed, letting go of his hand. “You should be honest with her and tell her that you like her.”

“I don’t like her.”

“Ugh,” she rolled her eyes, something he was starting to regret teaching her. “Yes you do! It’s obvious!”

“It is?”

“Yes!” She threw her hands up in the air in defeat. She started turning away from him, going to her room across the hall, but he heard her mumble a “Boys are so dumb.”

“Hey, Holls,” he said, once he reached the door. She turned when she got to her door and he stuck his tongue out to her, a gesture she quickly returned but was followed by a smile before she closed her door.

He went inside his room and closed the door behind him, dragging his feet to his bed and plopping down onto it face first. He had thought about El on the entire walk there, but now he was finally realizing he wasn’t really mad at her. 

Yes, she had overreacted and yes, she was the reason he had to walk home for miles and do the most physical activity he had done in his entire life. But he was the reason she had done those things. His word choice could not have been worse.

“You make things so difficult _,_ ”he had screamed at her, which was true, but if his goal was to be her friend, he had completely missed the target. Especially by yelling back to her “We never even started” when she had told him that they were done. What he should have done was follow and stop her and try to convince her to listen to him. He should have told her the truth from the beginning.

That the first day he saw her he realized she was going to be the most beautiful girl he would ever see in his life. That when she ignored him it hurt his ego and feelings and that’s the only reason he said mean things about her. That he knew that he liked their arguing because he knew that was the only way she would talk to him. That he knew he cared about her way before Max ever told him anything about the foster homes and that the only reason he brought it up was because he wanted to know if maybe that was the reason she had been so nervous around him. 

Because if it was, maybe it was hope enough that she hadn’t hated him in the beginning. Because he definitely hadn’t hated her.

“I should have told her I liked her,” he whispered to himself, flipping over to his back and staring up at his ceiling. 

There were glow in the dark stickers in the shapes of stars that he had put up there when he was younger. The universe was always something that fascinated him, its vastness and mystery something that gave him hope. When the bullying from classmates became too much or he felt isolated from his family, he would remember that he wasn’t alone because of how large the universe was and instead of feeling smaller, he would feel special. The universe was amazing and somehow  _he_  got to be a part of it. 

But in all of those years of reading books about constellations and planets, he never could have imagined that the most incredible part of the universe would be found in Hawkins. He never could have known it would be El Hopper.

And the fact the universe, in all of its glory and space, had put him in the same place as her...maybe the universe was on his side after all. 

If his chance at being with El was ruined, it was because of him, not the universe. And he knew that only he could fix it. He didn’t care how long it took or how many more miles he had to walk, he was going to try and fix things with her. 

He didn’t how long he had stayed there, looking up at his ceiling and thinking about the girl who overpowered the sun and the moon and every speck that made up the galaxy, but his eyes had closed and he’d drifted off to sleep. In his dream, she was wrapped in his arms and a halo of light surrounded her just as it had the morning he woke up next to her. In his dream, she laughed as he sang to her. In his dream, he kissed her and she kissed him back.

But it was only a dream.

He heard his mom’s voice and felt something moving his shoulders, and when he opened his eyes he saw her standing over him.

“Michael, did you end up calling your girlfriend last night,” she asked.

“Not my girlfriend,” he mumbled, squinting as he adjusted his eyes to the light coming in from his room.

“Well regardless, your bike is here now. It was leaning against the door when your father opened it to get the newspaper this morning,” she huffed.  _His bike was back?_  “So hurry up and get dressed so you can take yourself to school.”

He shot up and ran past her downstairs to go outside, where he saw his bike leaning against the brick wall of his house. He looked around the ground, trying to see if there had also been a note left with it, but there was nothing.

Mike sighed, a little disappointed that he had missed the sound of El coming by to leave it, completely missing the opportunity to talk to her and apologize. But he went upstairs, changed and got ready, and headed towards the school anyways. El had never once missed a day of class, and he knew he would get the opportunity to see her when they had class together in the afternoon.

Still, he looked around his shoulders and all around him as he walked towards his locker, hoping that he’d maybe get the chance to see her sooner than expected. It was when he had stopped looking, grabbing a book out of his locker to put into his backpack, that a hand came out of nowhere and slammed his locker shut.

“Jesus,” he yelled, moving his hand back and turning to see Max’s face tied with a scowl and her blue eyes as icy as ever.

“Dude! What the fuck happened,” she yelled at him, shoving his shoulder back.

“You almost slammed my fingers into my locker is what happened,” he said, shoving her back and meeting her angry glare.

“I’m talking about, El, you idiot!”

His anger dropped as he realized what she had been yelling at him about. Of course El would have called Max about it. The two of them shared everything, from clothes to secrets, and this situation would have been no different. He could only imagine El calling Max once she reached her house, confiding in her best friend about everything that had happened and how much of a complete mouthbreather he was.

“Oh,” he sighed, moving the straps of his backpack further up on his shoulders. “She told you about Benny’s?”

“Duh,” Max stated, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she looked up at him and waited for him to say something.

“Is she okay,” he asked her quietly. He knew his bike was back and El had at least ranted to her on the phone about her feelings, but maybe she wasn’t okay. Max uncrossed her arms, her posture defeating a little bit. 

“She’s fine,” she answered. “She’s just upset right now and needs a little space.”

“She can have all the space in the world,” he said definitively.

“Mike-.”

“I’m serious! If I could buy space, I would use up all my savings just to buy more of it to keep her away from me!”

She laughed a little at his antics, knowing that he was being one hundred percent serious, and he smiled too before remembering another detail.

“Is El mad at you,” he asked. “For telling me her secret?”

“She said she wasn’t but I don’t know,” Max shrugged. “I really messed up telling you.”

“Yeah you did.”

She smiled at him and punched him in the shoulder, mumbling an “asshole.”

“Well you did,” he laughed, rubbing at his shoulder and pretending like Max hadn’t just hit him a little too hard. “If you wouldn’t have said anything then none of this would have happened.”

“And you still would have defended her?”

“And I still would have defended her.”

She nodded, accepting his answer. 

“Okay,” she said, hitting him one more time on the arm but a little lighter. “I’ll see you later. I’m gonna go find El.”

It wasn’t until his English class that he saw El himself, wearing a baggy Hawkins Police Department sweatshirt with curls pulled up into a messy bun, a few strands falling and accidentally framing her face. She was looking off towards her left out of the big window that was beside her and even though he only saw half of her, he didn’t miss the dark circles under her eyes and the lack of lipgloss on her lips. She looked tired. Still beautiful, always beautiful, but exhausted, and the idea that he had even a little to do with it made him feel guilty.

He went to sit down at his desk and looked straight ahead towards the chalkboard, remembering what Max had said about her needing space and not wanting to accidentally make direct eye contact with her. For the beginning of class he managed to avoid looking back at her, thanks to the teacher lecturing for most of it. But then she opened the floor to discussion and once again, she depended on Mike and El to be her saving graces for a class filled of students who refused to participate.

Mike raised his hand, carefully choosing his words so that El wouldn’t be prompted to respond. If he was lucky, their teacher would notice that she wasn’t in the mood to talk today and she would just continue to ask him questions or badger other students.

But as soon as he was done answering, the teacher smiled and looked back towards El’s direction.  _Oh no._

“El,” she smiled. Mike tried getting the teacher’s attention, shaking his head slightly and gritting his teeth to stop her, but she didn’t notice. “Would you like to say something in response to Mike?”

He heard her mutter something, the words incomprehensible since she was far away and he still wasn’t looking towards her.

“Excuse me,” their teacher said. “Would you like to repeat that for the class a little louder?”

“I said,” El spoke up, her voice loud and firm. “Fuck. Him.”

Mike felt his stomach drop at those words, still forcing himself not to look at her, even though he could imagine the angry look on her face. Their teacher’s mouth had dropped and the other students had gone into a rambunctious chorus of “OH.”

“Miss Hopper! Get your things and go to the principal’s office! This school does not tolerate that kind of language,” their teacher sputtered, her eyes still wide and mouth agape. He heard El shuffling around among the still rowdy students and he finally saw her in his line of vision when she walked towards the front door.

Their eyes met as she briefly stopped at the door to turn and look at him. And even though she proceeded to flip him off before opening and slamming the door to leave, he saw it. The same softness and glimmer in her eyes that had been there the day before when she’d accepted his date-not-date invitation was still there when she had looked at him.

That, coupled with the fact that she had acknowledged him even though she had told Max she needed space, let him know that she wasn’t really mad at him. She could pretend all she wanted, that’s what they had been doing since they’d met each other, but she did not hate him. It was a fact that gave him butterflies and made him blush and when the teacher asked if he was fine, he couldn’t even speak at the thought of bursting. He just nodded and bounced his leg up and down from pure excitement.

The excitement apparently showed all throughout him, his friends asking him about it when they saw him at lunch.

“Are you okay,” Will asked him, a concerned look on his face as he talked to Mike who was still beaming and a little flushed and physically incapable of not moving around.

“Yeah did you get high or something, dude,” Dustin asked, leaning over to touch his forehead with the back of his hand.

“No,” he said, leaning away from him but still smiling.

“Where’s El,” Max asked him, walking up to the table with Lucas.

“Principal’s office,” Mike laughed. It wasn’t at the fact that she was there. Honestly, the last thing El deserved to her already bad week was getting in trouble with the school. But he just couldn’t bring himself to stop smiling.

“What?!”

“Dude, is that why you’re so happy,” Dustin groaned. “That’s cruel, Mike.”

“Why is she in the principal’s office,” Max asked him, bringing his attention back to her.

“She said ‘Fuck. Him,’” Mike smiled, imitating her. “To me. In front of everyone.”

“Holy shit!”

“She said what?!”

“What did you do to her now?!”

“Are you okay,” Will asked again, his voice surprisingly sounding above the rest of their group’s.

“Yeah,” he laughed genuinely, having to sit on his hands so that he could stop moving them. “I’m really,  _really_  good.”

“He’s crazy,” Lucas whispered to Max, earning him a smack across the chest from her. 

“It was funny,” Mike shrugged, a goofy grin still plastered on his face. “And then she flipped me off before she left class.”

He said the last part with a sigh that almost sounded dreamy and it caused Lucas and Will to raise their eyebrows at him. Dustin simply leaned over again, grabbing his face in both of his hands.

“Are you sure you’re not high?”

“I’m sure,” he grinned, even though he couldn’t deny that he felt happy beyond belief and a little on top of the world.

“You better not be, Wheeler. Save that shit for my party.”

Him and the rest of the group turned to see Jennifer Hayes standing at the end of the table, her blonde hair pulled up into her usual ponytail and her hands holding a folded sheet of paper.

“Party,” Dustin asked, the word sounding foreign on his tongue as he sported a similar look of confusion to the rest of them.

In all of their years of education, they had never been approached by anyone popular if it didn’t involve a question about a homework assignment. They had all just accepted that going to parties was not going to be a part of their high school experience.

“Yup, this Friday night,” Jennifer smiled, extending the paper to Mike. He opened it to find her address written on it in pink, glittery gel ink. He knew by the street name that it was a house in the Loch Nora neighborhood, and he immediately started envisioning a white, three story suburban oasis. 

“And we’re all invited or is it just Mike,” Lucas asked skeptically.

“Umm,” she started unsure, before beaming at them. “All of you course! And El, too! Obviously.”

She added the last part and looked down at Mike to wink at him, something that made Will start choking on his food and Max snort with laughter.

“Alright, thanks,” Mike told her, still smiling but wanting the conversation to end. “We’ll make sure to tell her.”

“Hope to see you guys there,” Jennifer told them, waving goodbye to them before leaving back to her own table filled with cheerleaders and football players.

“Are we really going to that party,” Will asked, still coughing.

“Hell yeah,” Max exclaimed, taking the paper away from Mike’s grasp and staring at it herself. 

“All of us,” Lucas asked.

And Max folded the paper up, put it in the back pocket of her jeans and looked up at Mike with a smirk on her face.

“All of us.”

* * *

 

El really had not thought her plan through.

When she had left with Mike’s bike from the diner, she was so mad that she just wanted to take something of his away from him just like he’d taken away her hope that things between the two of them were getting better. The first thing she’d thought of had been his bike, the two wheeled contraption visible through the window, so that’s what she’d had taken. But now she was thinking she should have taken something else. 

“What the hell is that,” Jim asked.

She’d reached home at the same time he was about to take off to go to work, taking over night shifts recently because another officer had just had a kid. He was out on the porch in his uniform, about to turn the key to lock the door to the house, when he saw El show up riding the bike.

El tried to be casual about it, her head held high as she got off of it and walked it to the front door. “It’s a bike,” she responded, kicking the stand out to make it stand on it’s own. “Haven’t you ever heard of one?”

“I know what a bike is, smart ass,” he bit back, his hand on his hip. “What I meant was what the hell you’re doing with it when you don’t have a bike.”

“I stole it,” she murmured, looking down at her shoes.

“You what?!”

“I stole Mike’s bike,” she said louder, looking up at him and feeling her eyes water at the sight of him looking angry at her. 

Saying it out loud for the first time, she’d finally realized what she had done. She’d taken Mike’s only means of transportation. Mike, the boy who she had liked and then hated and then liked again, had been stranded at the diner because she once again had acted without thinking. If he never wanted to see or speak to her again, she wouldn’t blame him. She didn’t want to hang out with herself at that moment either.

El tried to make her way past her dad by making a grab towards the doorknob, but he put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“No way, kid,” he said. “We’re going to go drop it off at his house and then I’ll bring you back here before I go to work.”

“No way,” she scoffed, blinking back her tears. “I’m not giving it back to him.”

“I am the chief of police. You do realize how bad it looks that his daughter stole something, right?”

“I don’t care,” she screamed, the emotion in her voice breaking the barrier she’d been struggling to keep up and letting her tears fall freely down her face. She wiped at her tears as her dad’s face turned from anger to concern.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, trying to stop and hold back a sob but failing.

“What happened, honey,” he said, bringing her in for a hug and letting her wrap her arms around him as she cried into his chest. 

“Nothing,” she replied, still crying. “It’s dumb.”

“Obviously not if you’re crying about it.”

“It is,” she said, letting herself go and wiping at her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. “I’m sorry that I stole the bike. I know I overreacted and that it was wrong but I just...I can’t see Mike right now.”

“Did he do something to you,” he asked, his voice low and threatening but she knew it wasn’t directed towards her.

“No,” she told him quickly, shaking her head and almost rolling her eyes at the idea. Mike had made it very clear to her that nothing would be happening between them any time soon. More likely ever. “Can you just drop it off without me?”

“Okay,” he said, eyeing her carefully. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” she said, giving him a weak smile. He pulled her close again and dropped a kiss to the top of her head before ruffling her curls.

“Alright,” he said. “Go inside and get some rest. I’ll make you some Eggos when I see you in the morning.”

She nodded at him, still standing on the porch until he had the bike in the back of his truck and he was out of sight. It wasn’t until he was gone that she went inside, locking the front door and going to her room to close herself in.

She still felt like crying, all of her emotions held back by a dam that obviously hadn’t been constructed properly, but she knew that some of her feelings weren’t solely directed to Mike. She grabbed the light pink telephone off of her nightstand, a gift from Jim for her 16th birthday during the summer, and she dialed the only phone number she had memorized by heart.

It rang three times before it stopped and she heard the familiar voice on the other end of the phone.

“Hello?”

“Did you tell Mike about the foster homes?”

El heard a sharp intake of a breath and she could almost imagine the blue eyes closing at the impact of her question.

“I’m sorry,” Max said quickly. “I’m so, so sorry, Ellie-.”

“Why would you do that,” El asked, the defeat clear through her voice. 

When she had told Max about her past, it had been after the situation with Mike when she overheard him saying mean things about her. She’d been upset and when Max had managed to cheer her up, she knew that the girl was her best friend. El had put her trust in Max, had shared a secret that she had been terrified of, and it hurt that Max hadn’t realized how important it had been to her. 

“I don’t know. Because I’m dumb,” Max offered.

“You have a 3.9 GPA, Maxine.” El used her real name so that she was aware of just how upset she actually was. “Come up with a better excuse.” 

“Okay,” she sighed. She took a deep breath. “Mike was worried about you and before you start laughing,” she said, already predicting her best friend’s behavior. “He really was. I wouldn’t have said anything, but he didn’t understand why you would have been worried about your dad and I don’t know, I just told him the truth. It wasn’t my place and I’m sorry.”

“What did Mike say when you told him,” El asked her, remembering how Mike had brought it up when she had asked for an explanation as to why he had stood up for her.

“Nothing. He just kind of spaced off.”

“Oh.”

It was silent between the two girls for a good minute, something that had never happened with them before unless they were sleeping.

“Are you mad,” Max asked quietly. 

El began to tear up at the sound of her voice. Because yes, she was upset at her, but she still loved her. She knew more than anyone, especially then, what it was like to make a mistake. And that’s all Max had done: a mistake.

“I don’t think I can afford to be mad,” El answered, trying to exert a laugh but coming out as a cry instead. “I need a friend right now.”

“What’s wrong, Ellie,” Max said, her voice comforting but firm, just like her.

“Well we were both wrong about why he saved me,” she told her, sniffling. “It wasn’t because he liked me and it wasn’t even blackmail. It was pity.”

“What?”

“I went with Mike to Benny’s after school,” she began, her voice still shaky. “He wanted to celebrate the ‘A’ we got on our project. So he waited for me to get out of rehearsal and then we rode over there on his bike. But when we got there we started fighting and I asked him why he had defended me and the foster homes was the first thing he brought up.”

“Wow,” said Max.

“Yeah,” El replied, falling back on her bed. “So it was pity. I worried all weekend about what it meant and it turns out he just felt sorry for me.” 

Max sighed through the phone.

“What,” El asked.

“It’s just that,” Max began, letting out a breath. “I don’t think it was pity.”

“Max-.”

“I’m serious, El. Mike is kind and he’s empathetic but he doesn’t pity people. Maybe you misunderstood him or something.”

“You weren’t there,” El said, maybe a little too harshly. “You didn’t hear what he said.”

“You’re right,” Max gave in. “I wasn’t there and I have no idea what you must have felt like when you heard it.”

“I just think I need space from him for a little while,” El whispered.

“Totally,” Max agreed. “I’ll tell him when I see him.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

It was quiet for another minute, El deciding she didn’t like the spaces in between conversations with Max, before she spoke up again.

“Hey, El?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry again about telling Mike about your past. That was...that wasn’t okay. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Max,” El said. Even though she couldn’t see her, she felt the sincerity of her words. Max was always able to tell people exactly what she was thinking and felt, her transparency something El always envied but especially did now. “I’m gonna go, okay? Thanks for talking to me.”

“Always,” Max spoke softly. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” El replied, hanging up the phone quickly as she felt another overwhelming rush of emotions overcome her. She got up and walked across her room to her bookcase, kneeling down to the bottom shelf where she kept the yearbook from the past school year.

She’d bought it because her dad had insisted that she should have something official to remember her very first year of actual school, even if she had only joined the second semester. She only ever turned to the last pages where her friends had signed, reading the carefully written paragraphs whenever she felt sad, or to the theatre spread where there was a picture of her and Max in  _The Wizard of Oz._

For the first time ever, El found her hands flipping through the yearbook pages, her mind leading her to the pages with students who had last names that started with a ‘W.’ Her eyes scanned the page until she saw him. Michael Wheeler, with his buttoned up shirt and black eyes that seemed even darker in black and white but with a light smile that even a lack of color couldn’t diminish its subtle radiance. And suddenly a drop of water hit the page right next to his face and she realized she was crying again, her tear having fallen and landing on the page.

_She’d messed up_. That was all she could think about as she closed the book and held it to her chest, her body curling up as she leaned against the the bookcase and finally allowed herself to release her emotions. 

She knew she had messed up all the way back in January when she didn’t talk to him. And she’d messed up continuously for several months after when she continued to let her feelings restrict her from approaching him. And she’d messed up when she decided to start their rivalry in a petty and public manner when she should have simply confronted him in private. And now she had messed up again by not letting him talk and explain, and overreacting on the date she had been dreaming about since she’d met him.

She should have never screamed at him. Mike was not perfect, but he had been trying, and she shouldn’t have yelled at him for attempting to be kind to her. Especially when she knew she wasn’t perfect herself. She knew better than anyone that she was far from of it.

And sometimes El would leave her body and look down at herself and see her actions. And she did things she didn’t understand. And she did things she knew were wrong. But she couldn’t stop.

Even then as her body shook with violent sobs and tears ran down her now red and puffy face, she knew it was dumb. It was  _so_  dumb to be crying over a dumb boy with dumb freckles, a boy she hadn’t even realized she still had feelings for until the past few days. But it felt like she was drowning and the whole world was just watching her because she never told it she didn’t know how to swim.

El had no idea what she was doing. With anything. She didn’t know what to do with her mistakes or her feelings or her future. She just knew she hated being sixteen. She hated it more than anything. Because being sixteen made everyday feel like the end of the world and she could tell herself that she was being melodramatic, but that didn’t stop her from feeling like she was gasping for air all the damn time.

She didn’t know when she stopped crying and fell asleep, her crying exhausting her, but her dad woke her up early in the morning when he came back from his shift. She only briefly saw his face as he bent down to pick her up and lay her on her bed, taking off her shoes and putting the covers on top of her before he left. 

Later in the morning when the sun was actually out and he came in to wake her up for school, he asked her if she wanted to stay home for the day.

“We can watch those daytime soaps you used to love,” he offered. “And pig out on candy and get fat.”

She cracked a smile but shook her head. 

“I think I want to see my friends,” she answered.

If she was being honest, she could really use a hug from Dustin, who always managed to make her stress disappear even for a little bit. And some words from Will, who always knew exactly what to say to make her feel better. And a piggyback ride from Lucas, who always could tell when she was tired and needed a break. And a hand holding from Max, who always reached out to her and made her feel grounded.

And that was why she ended up going to school, her routine in the morning dragging on at a much slower pace than usual and forcing her to put her hair up and away from her face. She’d grabbed onto her dad’s old sweatshirt for comfort throughout the day and hoped that she’d be able to find some from her friends soon.

But before she was able to see any of them, she saw Mike.

Mike who had broken her heart and whose heart she’d broken right back.  _Had she broken it?_  He wasn’t even looking at her. Sometimes he would turn over his left shoulder and look at her for a second before turning back to the front of the classroom. But now he wasn’t even in looking in her direction.

_He hates me_ , she thought. Which was of course not a thought that was new. Last week it had been an accepted fact of life. But then he had been kind and everyone in school had convinced her that he had feelings for her and she’d accepted that they were a possibility- new evidence for a new fact. Not anymore, though. Obviously.

El had told Max she needed some time away from him, but looking at him then, made her want to be anything but. She wanted to be close to him. She was still mad at him, but if anything, she was madder at what he made her feel than at what he had said. 

_Hopeless and sad and wanting to be given the attention that he always provided her with and the smirk he gave her that was reserved especially for her and desperately missing the way he called her nicknames and-_

He began talking. It was a response to a question the teacher had asked but she hadn’t been paying attention. His voice was deep and steady, an articulate answer coming out of his mouth, but all El noticed was the way he sounded fine. She couldn’t understand how he could pay attention in class and answer questions as if everything was okay. As if a little piece of his life hadn’t broken off last night.

She felt like she could burst at any moment and here he was quoting Shakespeare from memory. It made her angry beyond rationale and knew that it wasn’t fair to be mad at him for sounding like everything was normal, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to tell him exactly what she thought, about how they were both supposed to be devastated and he should have gotten the fucking memo. 

“El,” her teacher’s voice said. “Would you like to say something in response to Mike?”

_Mike? The boy who was sitting there a few feet away from her when just yesterday he’d been only inches away while she wrapped her arms around him and naively thought about how they were on their way to starting a good relationship but now he was pretending like she didn’t even exist? That Mike?_

“Fuck him,” she muttered, not even thinking about what she had just said.

“Excuse me. Would you like to repeat that for the class a little louder?”

“I said,” El spoke up. And maybe she shouldn’t have repeated herself. It was her opportunity to change what she had said but she hadn’t even been listening to the class discussion. So she took the opportunity to repeat herself and let Mike hear her. “Fuck. Him.”

She ignored the cheers from the other students, her eyes steeled on Mike’s, begging him to turn around and look at her. To say something, anything to her. But he didn’t. All she heard was her teacher telling her to go to the principal’s office.

As she walked towards the front of the class, her mind told her not to look at Mike as she left but she couldn’t resist. She reached the door and saw him staring at her and even while she was mad at him she still felt her stomach flutter. She hated that.

With a final gesture of her middle finger towards him, a sign that he could honestly go to hell for being cute and annoying and still making her like him when she was pissed, she walked to the principal’s office. 

She’d never been in trouble, not that she had had many opportunities to be in trouble since she’d only started school in January, but walking into the office at the end of the hallway made her feel nervous. What did they even do to students who got sent there? She suddenly remembered her dad and felt her nervousness grow as she thought about whether or not he would be informed that she was in trouble.

The secretary there asked her what she was in for, and El informed her that she was kicked out of class and sent there. 

“Hmm,” the secretary said, looking her up and down before retreating towards the principal’s actual office behind a closed door. She came back with a grimace on her face. “Take a seat. He’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Okay. Thank you,” El told her, going to sit down on one of the plastic chairs that were lined up against the wall, the rest of them occupied by other students. She nervously tapped her nails against her trapper keeper, her mind praying that her dad wouldn’t find out about what had happened. After about fifty minutes of sitting in agony, the man who was their principal came out of his office to get her.

“El Hopper,” he said, gesturing his arm in a big hand movement that told her to stand up. “Come on in.”

The office was dull and gray, a plastic plant in one corner of the room and a framed college degree on the wall behind the man’s desk. El had never been in there before until then and she quickly decided she could have gone her entire life without seeing it and never miss anything.

Her file, a tan manila folder with the words “Hopper, El” written neatly on its tab in permanent marker, was on his desk. He opened it, casting a quick glance towards her while he reviewed the few papers that were in there.

“Well, Miss Hopper. You got straight A’s last semester and the only mark I see on your attendance record is a tardy from last week,” he said closing the file, and interlacing his hands, putting them on top of his desk. “Do you want to explain why you’re here today.”

“I said a curse word,” El answered quietly. “The F word, and I know it was bad and wrong, but I’m just tired and wasn’t thinking.”

He sighed and scooted his chair closer.

“El, you are a bright kid. With your grades you can go anywhere you want basically. You’re a junior and next year you’re going to start applying to colleges. You have to think about your decisions and how they affect you.”

“I know,” she said quickly, trying not to sound annoyed even though she was. College was the last thing she liked talking about. She just wanted to make it through the day most of the time, she didn’t want to think about something that wouldn’t even hypothetically happen to her until two years from then.

“Since this is your first offense, and it was not that severe, I am going to report you to detention today after school.”

“But I have rehearsals for the play!”

“Well then you better tell your director you won’t be able to make it,” he smiled, even though it was anything but kind. He got up from his chair and went around his desk to hold the door open for her to leave. “Have a good afternoon, Miss Hopper. And please watch your mouth next time.”

She had half the mind to curse at him but she decided that it wouldn’t be the best idea since she that was what had landed her there in the first place. She knew it was her anger at Mike for being nonchalant about everything that had caused her outburst but now she was even more mad at him. Since she’d known him, he had made her wild and impetuous and she was going to pay for it by spending her evening in detention instead of rehearsal. 

The play was going to be premiering soon, the last thing she needed was to miss rehearsal. She dragged her feet down the hallways and to the empty classroom where her next class was going to be. There were only about two minutes left for their lunch period and there was no point in going to the cafeteria only to walk back out.

She heard the bell ring and the commotion of students filling up the hallways and soon enough she saw Max walk through the door, a concerned look on her face when she spotted her.

“Oh, Ellie,” she said, going towards her and hugging her tightly before grabbing her hand in hers. This is what El had come to school for and it made her feel better. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Max,” she told her, squeezing her hand in reassurance.

“Well, it better be,” Max replied, sitting down to take her seat next to her but not taking her hand away. “Because Jennifer Hayes invited all of us over to her house for a party Friday night.”

“What,” El asked, her voice filled with confusion. They never got invited to parties. Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will were some of the biggest nerds in school, the fact that they were the founding and only members of the A.V. Club and had frequent involvement with the theatre and art program made them dorks in the high school hierarchy. And El and Max were nerds by association.

“I think the rumors made you and Mike popular,” she explained. “And the rest of us got invited, too because of them.”

“Oh my god.”

“So you have to behave,” Max told her, squeezing her hand that time. “If you get in trouble again your dad won’t let you go, and I’m not going if you’re not.”

El nodded and pinky promised that she would try and be on her best behavior. She was already going to try hard because she didn’t want to miss another rehearsal but now she couldn’t let Max down either. And if she allowed herself to be honest, the idea of going to a party sounded exciting. She liked the idea of dressing up and dancing with her friends. God knew she deserved some fun after spending all of last night crying.

So she thought of the party and allowed that to get her through her two hours of detention spent inside a classroom with the delinquents she had seen earlier in the office and some others as well. She thought of Whitney Houston music playing throughout a house and her friends talking and laughing and dancing with her. Friday was now the light at the end of a tunnel for her and she was so close that it was starting to blare itself onto her face.

She just needed to get through two more school days, Thursday and Friday, and then she could go to the party. 

But of course, life tested her.

When she walked into English class on Thursday, her teacher was there with a grin on her face that could only be described as malicious. She kept her eyes pointed towards El, never turning away, and it made El feel uneasy as she went to her desk to take her seat. 

Mike came in and when El made eye contact with him, he smiled at her and turned around to take his seat and even though it made her happy that he acknowledged her, and a little confused about why he smiled when they were supposed to be angry at each other, she still couldn’t ignore her teacher’s staring. 

Class began and their teacher walked out from behind her desk and towards the student. 

“Good afternoon, class,” she said, the look on her face still unsettling. “Before we begin, I think we need to turn our attention to Miss El Hopper.”

The students turned their heads towards her direction, El immediately feeling her chest tighten. She turned to see Mike but he was the only not looking at her, instead having his attention turned towards the teacher with an angry look on his face. That made El’s chest tighten, but in a different way she didn’t particularly have the time to dwell on at the moment. 

“El,” the teacher continued. “I believe you owe your classmates, and me, an apology for your behavior yesterday?”

“An apology,” El asked, her voice raised. “For what?!”

“The kind of language you used yesterday was not acceptable! It was very rude and disrespectful!”

She almost stayed quiet but her emotions reacted before her common sense and she stood up, her hands in fists by her side.

“No,” she exclaimed. “ _This_ is rude and disrespectful! You’re always picking on me, and Mike, because we’re the only ones who actually care about our grades in this class and it’s not fair! And it isn’t fair that the way you repay us is by being snarky and causing drama!  _You’re_  not the one in high school anymore!”

“Hey! Watch your tone!”

“No! You’re a teacher! You’re supposed to care about your students but instead you’re just a...a...”

She felt the word bubbling up inside her, the only one she could think of even though she hated it, and when the next words her teacher spoke were for her to be very careful with what she said next if she didn’t want to go to the office again, it came out of her.

“Bitch.”

The class went completely still, El not even daring to flinch, until her teacher cracked her neck and very slowly told her, “Get your things and go to the office. Now.”

El leaned down to grab her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder, and keeping her head held high as she began to walk out but then she heard the familiar voice and stopped.

“She’s right.”

She turned to see Mike standing at his desk, staring at their teacher, his voice steady and sure. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Wheeler, would you like to join her,” their teacher asked, her arms now crossed in front of her chest.

He turned to look at El, who was still standing by the door only a couple feet away from him. His lips quirked upwards into a tiny smile and then he turned back to the teacher.  _What the hell was he doing?_

“Yeah, actually. I would,” he said. He leaned down to grab his own backpack and then said goodbye to the teacher in mock salute.

“You two can come back to class when you decide you are going to be decent members of this community,” she yelled, but they were already out the door.

“Why the hell did you do that,” El asked him. She didn’t know what exactly he was trying to accomplish but it wasn’t going to work. 

“I’m trying to round out my transcripts,” he said, beginning to walk towards the principal’s office. “It’s a little too clean-cut. I need to let colleges know I have a personality.”

He smirked and continued walking.  _Was he trying to be cute? They were in trouble, and he was actually trying to make light of the situation?!_

She carried a much slower pace behind him until they reached the office, where she was once again informed that she had to go to detention.

“I guess we’ll be spending the afternoon together,” Mike told her, a smile on his face as he compared his blue detention slip to hers.

“It’s detention, moron! It’s not a date,” El told him, shoving past him as she went to the cafeteria. 

She was beyond infuriated that he wasn’t taking the situation seriously. He had purposefully gotten detention so that he could spend time with her, which maybe would have seemed flattering to someone else, but it only made him seem like an idiot to El.

When classes were over, El found herself back in the same dusty classroom she had been in the day before. There seemed to be less people there that day, just about eight other students and the teacher supervising them, but in the back corner of the room was Mike. He had put his backpack on the desk next to him and when he spotted her, he waved and moved his backpack, gesturing for her to sit down.

But El was still mad at him, because of Tuesday and Wednesday and now that day, and to spite him she walked in the same direction but stopped two desks in front of the one he had saved and sat in that one. Even though it had been incredibly cute how he smiled and waved at her, she had to remind herself that they were in detention. She wasn’t supposed to be enjoying herself and neither was he.

The old man in charge of detention instructed them that the rules for detention were no talking or eating, that they were only allowed to read or do homework, and then he went to sit down at his desk. El took out her math homework, deciding to be as productive as possible while she was stuck in there.

Which she was finding difficult since Mike kept whispering to her.

“Psst, El.”

She’d ignore him and continue working on equations and then a minute later he’d begin again.

“Hey, Princess.”

She flipped her curls over her shoulder and went back to writing her answers for another minute before he started another whisper.

“Hopper, come on-.”

“Michael Theodore Wheeler, if you don’t leave me alone I’m going to break your neck,” she told him, turning over her shoulder to look at him and whisper at him through gritted teeth.

He stopped momentarily to ask her. “How did you know my middle name is Theodore?”

“Not important,” she mumbled, even though the truth was that Max had found a paper in her notebook that she had scribbled on in class with “Mrs. Michael Wheeler” written over it and she had informed that “technically, she would be Mrs. Michael Theodore Wheeler.” 

She turned back around and was able to work in peace and silence for an hour until the school’s secretary came in and informed the teacher in charge that he had a very urgent call from his wife in the office.

“Stay here. I will be back,” he told the students, rushing off to follow the secretary. He was only gone for a few seconds when the rest of the students began packing up their things, zooming out of the class before he could return.

El decided to stay, not wanting to risk another detention since another trip to the office would require a phone call to her dad. And the party was tomorrow. She wanted to go to school, go home, and spend all night with Max getting ready for it. 

“Hey, El,” Mike said, behind her, reminding her that he was still there with her.  She rolled her eyes and stayed still. “El, please.”

“What do you want, Mike,” she asked, her patience wearing thin and finally turning around to face him. His eyes were apologetic and she could feel herself melting before he even said anything. 

“I want to talk to you and apologize.”

“For what exactly?”

He stood up and sat two desks in front of his own, to the one next to hers, and scooted it a little bit closer to her. 

“I hurt you,” he said softly.

“Yeah,” she deadpanned. “I’ve been aware of the fact.”

“I think we should talk about it, though.”

El scoffed, crossing her arms in front of him. 

“This isn’t  _The Breakfast Club_! We’re not going to have a heart to heart and realize that we’re just teenagers struggling through the same shit and become friends despite the odds.”

“And what would the odds be exactly?”

“Low. They’re very,  _very_ low.”

He looked questioningly at her before taking out his calculator from his backpack. She stared at him while he punched in random numbers and then finally turned back to look at her.

“You’re right,” he said, showing her the numbers on the calculator that read “0.000001.” “The chances are very low.”

She rolled her eyes and was about to turn away when he threw his calculator on the desk and told her firmly, “But I’m going to take it anyways.”

She gulped and felt her heart flutter and decided that she wanted to take it, too.

“I hurt you,” Mike began again. “I hurt you when I said all those mean things about you and I hurt you on Tuesday and I know I’ve probably hurt you a million times in between then and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me, Mike.”

“I don’t.” He leaned in closer to her, her heart racing at the thought that he was going to reach out to grab her hand, but he didn’t. “I know you can handle yourself, El. You’re outspoken and intelligent and you don’t take any shit from anybody.”

She felt herself blush and smiled at that, Mike finding himself smiling along with her, too.

“That’s why I’ve never minded arguing with you,” he continued. “Because I know you can beat anybody.” 

He gulped and leaned in closer, El finding herself leaning in, too. 

“I stood up for you on Friday because I thought it would make you feel better. Not because I felt sorry for you or thought it would save you. Because frankly, El Hopper, you’re the strongest person I know and if anything, you would be the one doing the saving.”

“You wanted me to feel better,” she asked him and he smiled gently at her, her words still sounding unsure, as if she couldn’t believe him.

“You should have seen your face, Hopper. You looked like you were just sentenced to death row.”

She made a move to punch him in the arm but he grabbed her hand instead, interlacing their fingers together. She stared at their joined hands, the warmth from his seeming to spread all throughout her, but also simultaneously feeling chills as his thumb moved softly and tenderly across the back of her hand. When she finally looked up, she saw that he was staring at her, his eyes darkened and magnetic.

“I’m sorry for everything, too,” she whispered. “About starting our arguments last year and being rude and stealing your bike and just...everything.”

“Eh,” he said dismissively, a smile tugging at his lips. “I kind of deserved it, didn’t I?”

“A little,” she whispered, shrugging playfully before letting him pull her closer to him. They stared into each other’s eyes, back and forth, his mouth incredibly close to hers, when the booming voice of their teacher interrupted them.

“Where did everybody go,” he exclaimed, making them both jump back and let go of each other’s hands. They immediately blushed, realizing that they both had gotten incredibly caught up in the moment.

_They’d almost kissed_. El’s heart began to race, trying not to let the idea of what had almost happened between them had they not been interrupted get to her head but she couldn’t help it. They had both leaned in, so close to each other they were practically sharing the same breath.

She had to put her head down on her desk for a few minutes to calm herself down. She turned her head to peek and see if Mike was looking at her. And he was, a light blush still on his cheeks and a dorky smile, and she had to turn and put her head back down because her heart was racing again.

After a while, she managed to lift herself up, and finish her homework. Beside her, Mike was writing something in a notebook. There were still a few minutes left to go in detention when she finished and she put her things away, staring straight ahead and allowing herself to think about what had happened.

She and Mike had been through a lot of changes in the past week, this one perhaps the biggest one of all. Because not only had they apologized and forgiven each other, but they had also held hands and almost kissed, and yes they had technically slept next to each other before, but this intimacy was something that happened while they were both conscious. 

What was supposed to happen to them now?

It was so confusing.

“Do you like being sixteen,” she asked him in a whisper, still looking straight ahead at the empty desks and chalkboard on the wall with the word “detention” scribbled on it in capital letters. She didn’t even know if he had her.

“No one likes being sixteen,” he whispered back.

She smiled and turned to look at him, his eyes also drifting from the chalkboard to her.

The teacher excused them when their two hours were done, signing their slips as proof that they had showed up for detention and gave it back to them. They gathered their things and walked in silence down the hallways and out of the school. 

“So did we do the right thing,” he asked, once they were walking down the steps to the bike rack. El saw her dad’s truck approaching in the distance but she turned her attention to Mike.

“What do you mean,” she asked him back, confused by his question.

“You said the odds were going to be low,” he explained, taking the chain off his bike. “But did we do the right thing by taking a chance anyways?”

Her dad truck’s honked at them as it was driving up to them, but El looked at Mike and nodded.

“Yeah,” she grinned, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “We did.”

She began to walk backwards towards the passenger seat of her dad’s truck, neither of them wanting to stop looking at each other.

“And you said this wasn’t going to be like  _The Breakfast Club_ ,” he teased, smiling at her before winking.

“Shut up,” she rolled her eyes, but had to turn away to hide her smile and blushing.

He mounted his bike and gave her one last grin before riding away once she’d reached the door handle of the car door.

And when she turned over her shoulder to see him riding his bike out onto the street, she pretended that she didn’t see him throw his fist into the air and had to bite down on her lip to keep her smile from spreading.

(It didn’t work.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something was supposed to happen this chapter but i decided el and mike deserved to have a little party, so we'll see if it happens there...
> 
> the "almost kiss" is dedicated especially to hannahberrie, who always makes me want to die when she has mike and el almost kiss but just bamboozles me instead
> 
> (and of course, the rest of this chapter (this story, really) is dedicated to each and every single one of you who make my heart so incredibly happy with your love and words of encouragement!! :) )


	6. the best way to shut a person up...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El go to a party.

There were a lot of things that Mike Wheeler thought he was never going to do: get detention, go to a party, talk to his older sister about girls. But now here he was, having done, planning on doing, and in the process of doing, all three of those things.

And it was all because of El Hopper.

When he’d gotten home from school on Friday, he’d gotten straight upstairs to start getting ready for the party. It was something that the entire school was buzzing about, rumors about keg stands and ten vacant rooms and a giant pool, swirled endless ideas of possibilities in the minds of the high school students.

Max especially was excited, talking about how she was going to dominate at beer pong. Lucas just shook his head, not excited for a night of being the designated driver and having to babysit his girlfriend. They’d discovered over the summer that Max was especially aggressive when she was drunk and he didn’t want her to start any fights.

Dustin and Will didn’t seem excited to go, both of them saying how they didn’t want to spend a night with people who they didn’t like and didn’t like them while they were just getting drunk, high, and making out. That was exactly what Mike had thought, too. The only thing that would make him want to go was —.

“I just want to go to dance,” El shrugged.

And El going to the party, the idea of him maybe getting the opportunity to talk to her and possibly even dance with her, was enough to get him to agree to go.

“Let’s just go,” Mike told Dustin and Will, trying to ignore the soft smile he saw appear on El’s face through the corner of his eye. “We’re probably never going to get invited to another party ever again. If we hate it, we can just leave.”

Dustin groaned in agreement and Will gave a quiet “okay” and it was decided then that Lucas would drive the boys over to the party, while Hopper would drive the girls.

Knowing then that there was a planned night of seeing El, a few extra hours of seeing her more than usual, was enough to excite him enough to make him slightly forget that he hated the idea of parties.

He had rushed upstairs to take a shower, changing into some sweatpants and a t-shirt before he decided what to wear. The party wouldn’t be for about another five hours, but he was so anxious and excited that he couldn’t keep still. He was about to watch  _Star Wars_  on the basement’s TV set to calm himself down a bit, when his mom knocked on the door and opened it, a smile on her face that made him a little nervous.

“What,” he asked her, already knowing her well enough to know she was going to say something that he wouldn’t like.

“Nancy is on the phone,” she smiled. “She wants to talk to you.”

_Nancy?_

Since Nancy had started college last year, she only called maybe once every two weeks. She claimed she was busy all day, a packed schedule that included a full time college course load, an internship at The New York Times, and a job at the student bookstore, and therefore couldn’t call her family as much as she wanted. And when she did call she only ever spoke to their mom, Mike and Holly only exchanging brief “Hey’s” with her, and their father claiming that he sent his form of love through checks for her college tuition.

So the fact that Nancy deliberately wanted to talk to him, and that his mother had an overly excited look on her face, led Mike to believe that she had told her about El. Leave it to his mother to be the biggest gossip in Hawkins, Indiana.

He picked himself up from the couch and trudged up the stairs, to the kitchen, where the phone was on the countertop waiting to be picked up again. He picked it up, putting it up to his ear and exhaling before answering.

“Yeah,” he asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me you have a girlfriend now,” she asked him, her voice angry and annoying in the only way that older sisters could be. 

“Because I don’t,” he answered. Which was a half truth. Because he didn’t know what him and El were, and that included the labels “boyfriend/girlfriend.” 

All he knew was that since yesterday, he couldn’t keep his mind off of her no matter how hard he tried. He kept seeing her face getting hazier the more she came near him, her eyes wide and dark, before they slowly started to close. He kept missing how soft her hand was and how perfectly it had fit into his. He kept imagining the scent of her floral perfume.

He didn’t know what they were, what their almost kiss had meant. He didn’t know if it would ever happen again. He only knew that he hoped it would, but this time, that he’d actually get it. 

“Well, that’s not what Mom said,” Nancy’s voice brought him back, and just like that his butterflies and the wide smile he had on his face from the thought of El being as close to him as she had been yesterday vanished.

“Mom says a lot of things that aren’t true,” he replied bluntly, pushing himself up to sit on the countertop. “Remember when she said she loved Dad?”

“Mike, don’t change the subject,” she whined. Really, if there was a topic they should have been discussing, it was the degradation of their parents’ marriage. Yet here she was, hassling him over his teenage love life. “Mom said that you’re dating the police chief’s daughter and that she stole your bike a few days ago.”

“She’s not-,” he stopped himself. “She is the police chief’s daughter and she did steal my bike, but we’re not dating.”

“So then she’s just a friend?”

“Umm,” he hummed.  _Were they friends now? What kind of people went from hating each other to almost kissing?_ They kind of skipped over the friend part completely.

“Mike?”

“It’s complicated,” he decided on. If they were anything, it was that.

“Oh my god,” she said excitedly, and he could almost see her with the superior look on her face she had whenever she beat him at a game or snitched on him to their mom. “You are dating her!”

“We’re not! It’s just…it’s complicated,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “We weren’t really friends before and I’m not sure if we are now. That’s all.”

“So then you don’t like her?”

“I never said that.”

“Does she like you?”

“I don’t know.”  _Hopefully._

She let out a hum that let him know that she was thinking about everything that he had said, all the information that he had just provided to her. It wasn’t much information to analyze but the journalist in her always tried to make a big deal out of small things, and it annoyed the hell out of him.

“Look, Nancy, I have to go,” he told her, just wanting to get off the phone already. “I need to get ready for a party-.”

“You’re going to a party,” she interrupted him, her voice full of disbelief. “With who?!”

“My friends.”

“You  _all_ got invited to a party,” she asked even louder.

“Okay, cool,” he said sarcastically. “Well, I’m going to go before you insult me and my friends more.”

“No! I’m sorry,” she said quickly, right as he had jumped off the countertop, prepared to hang up on her. “It’s just that…you guys have never been invited to a party before, you know?”

“Yeah, well we did this time. So I need to leave-.”

“What are you going to wear for the party?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. 

In actuality, he had been considering wearing the new yellow wool sweater he had bought recently. He knew yellow was El’s favorite color, something she had mentioned at lunch once last year when Lucas brought Max a sunflower. And El hadn’t seen him in his new sweater, yet. Maybe if he wore it she’d compliment him or think he was attractive or kiss him. 

He didn’t have any expectations, really, but if yellow was able to do any of that for him, he would make it his favorite color, too.

“Wear the leather jacket,” Nancy said brightly.

“No way,” he scoffed. 

Nancy had bought him a leather jacket for his birthday that spring, a cool and vintage leather black piece that she had found in a thrift store in New York and had fit him perfectly. There was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn’t  _him_. He preferred his warm knitted sweaters and zip-up hoodies. 

“C’mon! It’s your first party and it’ll make you look cool! You looked so good in it when you tried it on.”

“It’ll make me look a dork.” 

He could already imagine all the weird looks he would get from people who knew him as nerdy Mike Wheeler. Not to mention, all the teasing he was bound to receive from El.

“Not more of a dork than what you usually look like,” she snorted. “And it’ll definitely be better than the usual sweaters you wear all the time.”

“I like my sweaters,” he mumbled.

“No one else does.”

_El liked his sweaters, right?_  She’d said so when she wore his old one. Unless, of course she only liked them in theory, and not on him. Maybe, they did make him look like a dork.

“Okay, whatever,” he rolled his eyes. “I’ll wear the jacket. I have to go.”

“Okay, have fun at the party,” Nancy said, changing her tone back to that of ‘I’m-The-Older-Sibling-And-I-Know-More-Than-You,’ which seemed to be her default. “Don’t drink too much and treat women-.”

“With respect. Bye, Nancy,” Mike finished for her, hanging the phone up on her before she could say anything else. 

He grumbled, going back upstairs to his bedroom where he went immediately to his closet. He shifted through clothing hangers until he found the one that held his jacket, taking it off of it and holding it in front of him. He bit his lip, not knowing whether or not he wanted to go through with actually wearing it. The yellow sweater was staring back at him, but maybe his idea had been stupid.

He took off the t-shirt he had been wearing and went to put on a plain white one before putting his arms through the jacket and adjusting it. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, twisting from side to side, and trying to convince himself that he looked fine. 

He looked cool. Kind-of. 

After taking off his sweatpants and putting on some jeans and his black converse, he decided that the outfit look a bit better, and was starting to feel more confident. He went to the bathroom to mess with his hair a bit, the curls at the ends showing a bit more than they usually did. He put on cologne, remembering what Nancy had told him once and just spraying on a bit, and then went to brush his teeth so that his breath wouldn’t stink. Just in case.

He looked at himself in the mirror, deciding that he was ready before he finally realized he had no idea what he was going to say to El when he saw her. They hadn’t spoken that day, just exchanged shy glances and soft smiles, but surely they were going to talk at the party. Maybe he’d even be able to talk to her alone. But first he had to practice how he was going to begin a conversation.

He faced himself in the mirror, trying to force a smile on his face, and grimacing at how bad it looked.

“Hey, El,” he spoke to himself. “Fancy seeing you here- no, you sound like an idiot.” 

He breathed in and out and tried again. 

“Hey, Hopper! Why don’t you hop on over here and we can- no, Mike. Stop. Puns are a bad idea.”

He banged his forehead on the door. He sounded like an idiot and looked like an idiot and was totally going to make an even bigger idiot of himself in front of El.

He breathed in again and tried one last time. 

“Hi, El. You look beautiful. Do you want to dance?”

He smiled to himself a bit, happy that he had finally said one that sounded okay before realizing that  _shit! He had no idea how to dance._

He obviously knew how to dance by himself, dancing around whenever he cooked or took breaks from studying, but he didn’t know how to seriously dance in front of other people. 

He ran out of the bathroom and into Nancy’s old room to grab her portable radio before running back in there and locking the door. He fiddled with the different stations until he got to one that was playing pop music and started practicing dance moves. He tried some of the steps he’d briefly seen once on MTV when he was flipping through channels, trying to get down at least one solid move down. The problem was that he was too tall and lanky, with far too much arm and leg, and everything he tried to do ended up with him tripping or hitting himself in the face.

He didn’t know how long he had stayed in there for, dancing like an idiot for song after song in front of the mirror, but a banging on the door caught his attention, making him bang his knee on the sink.

“Michael, what is going on in there,” he heard his mom yell over the sound of the music and his own voice wincing in pain.

“Nothing,” he yelled back.

“Lucas is outside waiting for you,” she told him.

“Shit,” he muttered, turning the radio off. 

He looked himself over once more in the mirror, running a hand through his hair, before heading downstairs. Somewhere his mother yelled at him to be safe and be back home by 12 am because it was supposed to rain later that night and she didn’t want him out in bad weather, but he wasn’t listening.

Mike grabbed his key from the kitchen island and went outside to where Lucas was waiting in the driver’s seat of his dad’s parked car in the driveway. He opened the passenger seat’s door, a smile on his face from the excitement of getting to see El. Before he was even able to tell Lucas “Hi,” his friend stared at him in confusion.

“What the hell are you wearing,” Lucas asked him, Mike barely closing the door. He looked at Lucas’s outfit, a black t-shirt and denim jacket and jeans, and then back down at his own.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing,” Mike asked him, pulling the seatbelt over him and locking it into place.

“I’ve never seen you wearing anything that didn’t look like your grandma knitted it for you,” he mocked.

“Can you just drive please,” Mike told him, stuffing his hands in his pockets and trying to refrain from flipping him off.

“Sure thing, John Travolta,” Lucas muttered, switching the gear shift into reverse so he could drive away. Only that time, Mike did flip him off.

They went to pick up Dustin next, parking in front of his house and honking the car’s horn so that he could come out. Mrs. Henderson came out with him, grabbing his face in her hands and kissing his forehead and telling him to, “Have fun, Dusty!” She waved goodbye to Mike and Lucas in the car while Dustin walked to them, the two of them wearing matching, shit-eating grins.

“Hi, Dusty,” Lucas teased when Dustin opened the car door to slip into the backseat. “Are you ready to have fun?”

“As a matter of fact, asshole,” he began, but stopped when he looked at Mike. His face broke out into a smile right before he started laughing, leaning forward to mess with his the collar of his jacket. “What the hell are you wearing?!”

“Not you, too,” Mike grumbled, his blush returning to his face when Lucas joined in on Dustin’s laughter.

“Is El into the whole ‘bad boy with a heart of gold’ shit,” Dustin asked, his laughter coming back even harder when Mike turned over his shoulder to give him an exasperated look on his face.

“It’s just a jacket!”

“Hey, leave Mike alone,” Lucas said.

“Thank you,” Mike smiled too soon.

“He had a hard day yesterday. His girl left him stranded at the drive-in, he was branded a fool-.”

“Shut up!”

Lucas and Dustin kept laughing as he drove off to go pick up Will farther down the road. He had already been waiting out on the porch, hands stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie, when Lucas pulled up into the dirt road. Will smiled when he saw them, excitedly going down the steps and into the car.

“Byers,” Lucas screamed excitedly.

“Sinclair,” Will screamed back, settling into his seat.

“Are you ready to party?!”

“No,” he yelled in mock enthusiasm, buckling his seat belt.

“Oh come on,” Dustin said, shoving his shoulder lightly. “Mike over here is ready to go to the sock hop!”

“What,” Will asked, furrowing his eyebrows until he took in Mike’s outfit. “Oh hey! Is that a new jacket?”

“Nancy gave it to me for my birthday and she said I should put it on for the party,” he explained before looking to Dustin and Lucas. “And these idiots have been making  _Grease_  references since they saw me.”

“Why did you talk to Nancy,” Lucas asked him. Everyone knew that Nancy and Mike didn’t have the most open communication, only talking to each other when they were forced to at family dinners.

“She just wanted to talk, I guess,” he shrugged, not wanting to tell them that the real reason was that his mother had been spreading false rumors about him and El dating to probably everyone she knew.

“Well I think your jacket looks nice,” Will chimed in, giving him an honest smile. “Why I’d say the jacket is…automatic. It’s systematic.”

Mike groaned as he realized where he realized where he was going with it.

“It’s  _hydromatic_ ,” Dustin added, trying to give his best Danny Zuko impression.

“Why it’s greased lightning,” Lucas said excitedly.

“Greased lightning,” Dustin and Will screamed simultaneously, while Mike kept his head in the palm of his hands, trying to ignore his friends’ laughter.

“I never thought you’d betray me like this, Byers,” he finally said, turning back to look at Will who was still laughing at him. 

Lucas finally drove away when he managed to stop laughing and drove in the direction of Jennifer Haye’s house. The streets near it were lined with parked cars, the music from the party audible from a block away. They had to end up parking a few streets over, not finding any closer parking spots, and walking to her house. 

Walking up to the door, they heard “Pour Some Sugar On Me” by Def Leppard begin to play, Will easily identifying the song and seeming more at ease. Mike on the other hand, was more terrified now that he could see through the windows just how many people were there.

“You guys go ahead,” Lucas told them. “I’m gonna wait here for Max.”

“How do you know Max isn’t already inside,” Dustin asked him, his hand already on the doorknob. 

“Because we said we’d wait for each other outside Jennifer’s house, so she obviously isn’t here yet,” he explain.

And if Max wasn’t there yet, then neither was El. Mike tried to hide his disappointment at the idea of having to wait even longer to see her. 

“Do you want me to wait out here with you,” he asked Lucas, trying to sound casual but obviously failing since Lucas quirked an eyebrow.

“Did you want to wait for someone in particular, Mike,” Lucas asked him.

“No! Just…ugh. Whatever,” Mike groaned, pushing past Dustin to open the door to the house and being met by what looked like all the upperclassmen in their school.

To the right of him there was a giant dining room with the table being occupied for what looked like an intense game of beer pong. To the left of him was the even larger living room, couches pushed back against the walls to accommodate all the people that were dancing with red plastic cups in their hands. Directly in front of him was a long hallway with doors to the right side of it, people going in and out while other people leaned on the opposite wall and let their mouths go at each other with fury. There was a spiral staircase leading to the second floor, with more people being seen up there talking and dancing and kissing. 

It was exactly what Mike had been expecting. Maybe even more. It was a bunch of crazy teenagers with raging hormones and no curfews and Mike started to feel like going back outside. 

“C’mon,” Dustin said, grabbing him by the elbow. “Let’s just walk around so we don’t look like losers just standing here.”

“Good idea,” Mike told him, following him while Will walked beside him. 

They walked past their classmates playing beer pong and into the kitchen where they saw even more people, mixing together drinks and laughing. Dustin poured himself a cup of punch before taking a small sip and coughing, grabbing the attention of a few people nearby.

“Holy Shit,” he coughed, extending the cup to Will. He took a drink of it before smiling, and going to drink some more. Mike tried hard not to smirk at the irritated look on Dustin’s face while Will drank the punch with a breeze.

“Do you want to try it, Mike,” Will asked him, offering the cup to him.

He took it from him and took a hesitant sip. It tasted like pineapples and mangos and strawberries, like regular punch, but then another flavor he couldn’t recognize showed up in his mouth and he guessed that was the alcohol that had been mixed in there. It was actually pretty good, and he took another taste with ease before deciding that it was enough. He didn’t want to be drunk and make an idiot of himself in front of El.

Will took the cup from him, refilling it, and then the three of them continued walking and exploring the house. They ended up making their way outside to the backyard, where there were even more people dancing and drinking, and even a few in the pool despite the chilly breeze in the air. Then they went back inside, going up the stairs to explore the second story. 

The hallways were lined with rooms, all of them with closed doors, except for one at the very end that had a billiards table, people surrounding it in a game of pool, other people playing darts, and others simply standing and talking. One of those people was Jennifer, who saw the three of them standing in the doorway and smiled immediately.

“You guys came,” she said her voice high-pitched and excited, walking over to them and giving them all hugs. They all hugged her back, albeit awkwardly since they weren’t really friends with her. She had hugged Will last, and gave a giggly “boop” as she tapped the tip of his nose. “Where are the other ones?!”

“They’ll be here soon,” Will said, shifting from foot to foot.

“Good,” she hiccupped and then turned to Mike, her smile crooked and it made him want to laugh. “ _Miiiike_ , you look very handsome in that jacket!”

“Thanks,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck.

She leaned in closer to him, still smiling, and told him, “El is _so_ lucky to have you.”

She tried to wink but she just ended up closing both of here eyes, the movement looking twitchy and Mike widened his eyes, trying even harder not to laugh.

“I’ll let her know,” he said simply and she gave him a thumbs up before retreating back to her friends. Mike turned back to Dustin and Will, both of them with varied looks of amusement on their faces, and he said it before he knew he was going to have to: “Shut up.”

Will chuckled and Dustin put his hands in defeat, following him out of the room. They were walking back down the stairs, ready to check on Lucas, when Mike stopped right in his tracks in the middle of the staircase. 

“What the hell, Mike,” Dustin screamed, bumping into when he expected him to move but didn’t. But Mike wasn’t listening. 

The only thing he was focusing on, could focus on, was El.

She had just walked into the house behind Lucas and Max, her hair framing half her face in softer waves. There was red lipstick on her lips instead of her usual lip gloss and all he could pay attention to was the overwhelming feeling he had to kiss her. 

_God, did he want to kiss her._

El was taking off her denim jacket, revealing a short red dress that made her legs look long despite her small stature, and she looked incredible. Mike couldn’t breathe. 

_Holy crap_. 

She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life, which he knew already, of course, but he didn’t know she could get even more beautiful.

She folded the jacket over her arms, standing still and looking around the room, until her brown eyes landed on his dark ones, staring right at her. They stayed there, staring at each other, Mike still breathless at the sight of her. He didn’t know how long how they stayed there, staring at each other, until her lips slightly parted before a slow smile started to form, a similar smile on his own face.

Then she began to take slow steps towards him and he started to walk down the steps again, until finally, they were standing right in front of each other.

_Here we go._

* * *

El felt herself getting more nervous the closer it got time for the party.

It had been her source of motivation to get through the remainder of the week but now that she was actually getting ready to go to it, she found herself nervous. All her mind had thought of were the cool party sequences from movies, and the idea of finally belonging with other teenagers, and the chance of getting to hang out with Mike.

_Mike._

She felt lightheaded just thinking about him. Their almost kiss kept replaying in her head. She longed to hear him say words as sweet as he’d said them yesterday again, to feel his palm press against her own. There had been something so familiar about it, their hands easily finding and falling into place with each other. She just wanted it to happen again.

They hadn’t talked about detention or what had happened during it, or after. It seemed like a dream to El that morning, a hopeless attempt by her subconscious to try and convince her that she had a chance with him in reality. But then she saw him that afternoon at school, a shy smile shown her way that almost made him look boyish. 

And he had told her “I’ll see you later at the party” when lunch had finished and they were about to leave their separate ways. And El knew he didn’t mean much by it, only stating a fact, but it didn’t do much to calm her butterflies at the thought that he was going to be waiting at the party for her.

Which was what made her nervous.

Now that their relationship had changed, quickly crossed over from an amended friendship to something more in a manner of seconds, she didn’t know what to expect from him. Was he going to be nice to her from now on? Would he hold her hand like it was no big deal, as if only the thought of doing it a few weeks ago wouldn’t have sent them both into hysterics? Were they going to actually kiss?

The thought alone about Mike’s lips pressed against hers made her feel surges of electricity run through her veins. It must have showed, too, the glow and heat she was feeling from within visible on her face, because Max’s voice sounded concerned.

“Are you feeling okay, El,” she asked, walking over from the closet to where she was sitting on her bed. She put the back of her hand on her forehead. “You look a little funny and feel warm.”

“I’m fine,” El coughed, trying to calm down her blush. 

She was a little embarrassed about the fact that she had spaced out so much she’d forgotten that her best friend was currently with her to get ready for the party. El had been forced to go to rehearsal that afternoon since she had missed two days in a row, and when her dad had picked her up, they’d swung by Max’s house to pick her up.

She’d come out of the house with a duffel bag packed with pajamas and an extra change of clothes, but she’d also brought out a plastic trash bag filled with extra clothes.

“Jesus! Did you bring your entire closet,” Jim had asked her, watching her pick up the heavy bag and plop it into the backseat before she scooted herself in.

“Most of it, yeah,” Max replied, buckling herself in and smiling wide when the man simply rolled his eyes and drove away.

He had been very clear about his rules for allowing El to go to the party. He would drop her off and pick her a few blocks away, she under no circumstances was to drink anything that was offered to her in an open cup, and if things got out of hand she was instructed to find a phone, call him and get the hell out of there.

His rules weren’t life threatening and seemed fair so El smiled and nodded and hugged him for being the best dad in the world. Now she was kind of regretting he hadn’t been stricter so that she could have used him as an excuse for not going.

“Are you sure,” Max asked her, still looking at her with concern.

“Yeah. I’m just nervous,” El shrugged, moving away from the bed and stepping over the pile of clothes that Max had dumped on her carpet.

“Why?”

El stayed quiet, leaning down to pick out and toss clothing items to the side. She hadn’t told Max about what had happened between her and Mike during detention. And a part of her felt guilty keeping this information from her. But the part of her that was overpowering her decision making was selfish and wanted to keep the moment between her and Mike to herself. Everyone at school, even her friends, liked to pretend that they knew everything about them. But they hadn’t been there for their quiet moment of almost giving into one another. It was special, a piece of information that out of everyone in the universe, was only known by two people. She wouldn’t mind keeping it to herself for a little while longer. Maybe even forever.

“I just don’t know what to expect,” El answered, picking up a way too short denim skirt and throwing it to the “no” pile.

“It’s just going to be a bunch of loud teenagers, getting drunk and making out and pretending like this truly is the epitome of our entire lives,” Max answered with a casual smile.

“Awesome,” El replied sarcastically.

She continued looking through Max’s clothes while Max went back to El’s closet to look through hers. They both had no idea what they were going to wear, what they were even supposed to wear, and had decided that having two closets full of options didn’t hurt. Everything looked too casual, or too tiny, or too much. El wanted to look nice, pretty, but she didn’t want it to be obvious that was trying.

“Sometimes I think it’d be easier to be a boy,” El groaned dramatically, throwing herself on a pile of shirts after finding yet another rejected article of clothing.

“Yeah,” Max’s mumbled voice came from her closet. “There’s no way guys give a shit about what they wear.”

Her complaint though was quickly followed by a low “ooo” of excitement and Max came out holding a hanger with an olive green satin tank top.

“This is nice,” she cooed, putting it against herself. El propped herself up on her elbows from her place on the floor and smiled as she saw it.

“Try it on,” she nodded, and Max quickly took off the t-shirt she was wearing to slip on the blouse.

El stood up and got closer to her.

“That color looks amazing on you,” she told her honestly, the shade of green doing wonders to compliment her skin tone and eye color.

Max walked over to stand in front of the full length mirror, looking at herself from all possible angles. She bit her lip, as if something was off, and then reached a hand under her shirt to unclasp her bra and take it off, letting it fall to the floor.

“There,” she smiled, obviously enjoying the look of it now that her thick bra straps weren’t in the way.

“No bra,” El asked, quirking an eyebrow up at her. “Bold move, Mayfield.”

“I’m a bold woman, Hopper,” she replied with a wink before she moved away to find some jeans to wear with the top.

The party was coming up soon and while Max had luckily found an outfit, or half of an outfit, El hadn’t found anything. She also still had to shower and shave and do her hair and her makeup…god, it was so much easier to be a boy.

She left her room out of frustration to go the bathroom, deciding to at least do something productive with her time. She would just have to leave her outfit last minute, she thought, getting into the shower and trying to let the hot water take away some of her stress as she washed and shampooed her hair and shaved her legs. She didn’t know how long she had been in there but when she had dried herself off with a towel and threw on her bathrobe, she went back to find Max wearing a new pair of jeans and a cropped leather jacket, only the jacket coming out of her own clothes. She was sitting at her vanity mirror, in the process of teasing her red locks into a high ponytail.

“You look bitchin’,” El told her in awe.

“Thanks,” Max replied, putting the hairbrush down before turning to her. “I found something for you to look bitchin’, too.”

She walked over to the bed where El was barely noticing she had laid out clothes for her. Max picked up the bright red material and her mouth dropped.

It was a red cotton dress, the straps thin and the neckline sweetheart, while the skirt only flared out only a bit and looked to be way shorter than any of her own dresses, even just as Max was holding it up in the air with her hand.

“When the hell did you buy that,” El asked her, walking towards it and taking it away from her hand. She didn’t even know she had owned a dress, much less something so vibrant and short and girly.

“My mom got it for me so that I could wear it for my birthday but I never did,” she explained. “But it’s perfect for you! Please go try it on.”

El bit her lip, considering her options. She had about an hour and a half until they had to leave and at the point she just wanted anything decent to wear.

“Okay,” she gave in, walking over to her drawer to grab the only strapless bra she owned and a clean pair of underwear, before going back to the bathroom to change.

She put on the undergarments before stepping into the dress and pulling the straps over her shoulders. She stared back at her reflection, an excitement growing in her as she realized just how pretty she looked. The sweetheart neckline highlighted her chest nicely, the red material clinging to her body and showing off her small waist before it flared out to a skirt that hit a few inches above her knees and made her legs look longer than they actually were.

She twirled around just once, loving how soft and comfortable she felt in and how good she looked, too.

“What do you think,” El asked Max, stepping back into the room and playing with the skirt of the dress.

Max had been back at the vanity, about to put on lip gloss, when she dropped it and her jaw dropped with it at the sight of El.

“Holy shit,” she said excitedly, jumping off the stool and going over to her. She grabbed her hand and spun her around. “You look amazing!”

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” Max screamed. “Mike is gonna lose his shit when he realizes you have boobs!”

“Max,” she screeched, her face turning red and her arms immediately going to cover her chest.

“Well, it’s true! You always wear those sweaters and no one could ever tell. But this,” she said, letting out a low whistle.

“Shut up,” El rolled her eyes, secretly enjoying the compliment but not wanting the teasing to continue. Instead she went to grab some ankle socks and put those on before putting on her trusty white converse.

The rest of the hour went by with Max and El singing along to El’s radio, both of them working in their own little circles on their appearances. Max had ended up with a high teased ponytail and a full face of makeup, though the makeup was in subtle shades of nudes and pinks. El had blow dried and worked through her curls with product to make them softer and less springy than usual, leaving her with soft waves over her shoulder, while the other side of her hair stayed behind her with bobby pins. For makeup, she decided to only put on a coat of mascara and red lipstick, reminding herself that she didn’t want to look like she was trying to hard.

Rick Astley was about to play on the radio when her dad called from outside her bedroom door.

“Girls, it’s time to go! I got to be at work soon.”

El quickly got her denim jacket from her closet, throwing it on over her dress and checking herself one last time in the mirror. She felt pretty, but she couldn’t help but worry about whether or not Mike would think that she looked pretty, too.

“You ready to go,” Max asked her, coming to stand behind her and showing up in the mirror.

“Ready,” El nodded, looping her arm around Max’s and walking out to where her dad was waiting in the living room in his uniform.

“Where did you get that dress,” Jim asked her upon seeing her, his eyes wide.

“Max let me borrow it,” she smiled.

“Don’t you think it’s a little too short,” he suggested, trying to sound nonchalant but failing miserably.

_“Dad!”_

“Fine, fine,” he said, putting his hat on and grabbing the keys from their usual place on the wall near the door. “Let’s go.”

The three of them walked outside, the cold October air hitting them more than expected.

“It’s supposed to rain tonight,” he told them, locking the front door before walking with the them to the truck and getting inside, waiting for them to settle in their seats and put on their seat belts. “So stay inside the house, okay?”

He drove off and towards Jennifer’s house, his expression growing more worried the sooner they got to it by all the cars parked out and near it, and the booming music that was heard from miles away. 

“It’s gonna be okay, Dad,” El smiled at him, patting his arm gently when he pulled up to the street across from the house to drop them off.

“Just remember the rules, okay,” he asked her. 

She nodded and rolled her eyes at him, giving him a hurried “I know” and kiss on the cheek before her and Max jumped out of the car, practically slamming the doors shut. They looked both ways before crossing the street, their hands intertwined as they walked up to the large house that seemed to vibrate with the silhouettes of people in the windows and the loud pop music.

Lucas was outside, pacing around the front lawn with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jean jacket. He looked like he was freezing and El also felt a similar chill run through her spine, but hers was more from the fact that Mike was literally inside the house already. Possibly waiting for her.

“You’re not cold, are you,” Max asked, letting go of El’s hand as she approached Lucas.

He stopped pacing and looked at her, a wide smile growing on his face as he took her in. El couldn’t blame him. She looked beautiful. 

“I’m not now,” he smirked, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her in and give her a chaste kiss on the lips. 

“Have you been here long,” Max asked him, wiping the lip gloss she’d left on his mouth away with her thumb.

“Like twenty minutes,” he shrugged, moving his arm from his waist to go around her shoulder.

“Is everybody else here,” El asked him, and it was obvious that Lucas was just then remembering that she was standing there.

“Oh hey, El,” he smiled kindly before it turned smug. “Yeah, everybody’s inside. Not Mike, though. He couldn’t come.”

“What,” El asked, her stomach and face dropping simultaneously.  _Had he changed her mind about seeing her? Was he going to avoid her again?_

But Lucas proceeded to laugh at her, and she quickly realized that he was lying to her, her face turning angry. He tried ignoring the painful jab at his ribs by Max and continued to talk.

“I mean, yeah he’s here, but…,” he laughed harder, Max and El sharing confused looks. He took a deep breath and then changed his mind about his thought. “Never mind. You won’t get any of my jokes until you see him.”

El was even more confused then, but she followed Lucas and Max into the house anyways, closing the door behind her. 

“Heaven Is A Place On Earth” by Belinda Carlisle had just started playing through the speakers, and normally El would smile and sing along, but she felt nervous suddenly. The house was unbelievably warm, a stark contrast from how cold it was outside, and she took off her jacket. 

Her eyes were still scanning the room, looking around at all of her classmates dancing and kissing each other and being louder than usual. It seemed like everyone was there except Mike. She kept moving her head, craning her neck to see if she could catch a glimpse of him, until she finally spotted him.

He was standing on the steps of the spiral staircase, his hand on the banister, his eyes frozen on her. She felt herself stuck in place just looking at him. He looked…good. 

Good didn’t even begin to describe it, but she was scared that if she really tried to describe how he looked like, how looking at him made her feel, she would cross over into uncharted territory.

She stared at him with his hair curlier and messier than usual, his dark eyes unbelievably alluring, his black leather jacket that made him seem like a 50′s movie poster boy. Like he was the type of person to have his convertible parked outside and ready to take his girlfriend away from everybody, to run away together and never go back.

The more she stared at him, the more she started fantasizing about how nice it would probably to feel to run her hands through his hair, to have the tough leather pressed up against her, to have his lips even closer to hers than they had been yesterday.

_Calm down_ , she told herself, feeling hot all over. She had to take a deep breath, discrete as it was, before she allowed herself to look at him and not feel like crashing into him. 

He liked her. She had to remind herself of that. 

He liked her, she liked him, and he was staring at  _her_  with an untold passion that made her heart throb. The cutest boy at the whole party, maybe even all of Hawkins or Indiana or the United States, was looking right at her.

She let herself smile at that, feeling butterflies as he started to smile in return, and then she slowly took steps towards him. He came down the stairs towards her until he was completely off the last step and he took one more away from it to reach her. 

Having him even closer to her now only made her realize that maybe he was even the cutest boy in North America.

“Hi,” she breathed, staring up him.

“Hi,” he smiled down at her, and she felt herself getting lost in him, until something pushed him forward and he almost hit her.

“If you guys are done being gross” Dustin groaned, shoving past Mike. “People are trying to get through.”

It wasn’t until then that El realized that Dustin and Will were there, too, along with some other people she didn’t know that well who were all trying to go downstairs. 

“Hi, El,” Will told El briefly, following Dustin to the living room where Lucas and Max had migrated to. 

El was now wearing a tinge of blush on her cheeks as she realized that her and Mike probably looked like complete weirdos just staring at each other for so long. She looked down at her shoes, trying to avoid eye contact with Mike, who was still looking at her in the way that made her feel shy and confident all at the same time. Mike made her feel a lot of thing all at the same time.

“Youlookreallynice,” he blurted out all at once, and she finally looked up at him to see that he looked embarrassed, a pretty pink color growing on his cheeks that almost masked all his freckles.  _(Okay, maybe he was the cutest boy on Earth.)_

“What did you say,” she asked, trying not to smile at how adorable he looked.

“Your…” He began, his face going blank, before he started gesturing to her dress, the word obviously slipping from his mind and she would laugh if she wasn’t so distracted by him

“Dress,” she provided for him.

“Yeah! Dress,” he said excitedly, breathing out in relief. She smiled widely at him and he continued. “Your dress is really nice! And your hair! And your lipstick!”  _Her lipstick?_  She blushed again and he winced before he quickly went in to try and redeem himself. “Not that I was looking at your lips! Or that I wasn’t! I just noticed that the shade matched your dress and it looks nice-.”

“Are you okay, Wheeler,” she giggled. She rose up to her tiptoes and placed the back of her hand on his cheek to tease him, her eyes twinkling as they looked into his. “Are you already drunk?”

“God, I wish.” He groaned and ran a hand down his face.

“Why?”

“Because then at least I’d have a good excuse as to why I sound like an idiot.”

He looked sad and embarrassed and she had to fight back the urge to wrap her arms around him and tell him that while yes, he sounded like an idiot, she was also kind of embarrassed by how attractive she still found him _. (Cutest boy in the universe?)_

“Well then what’s the excuse you use for sounding like an idiot everyday,” she asked him teasingly, crossing her arms in front of her and smiling at him so that he knew she was teasing.

“The same one as yours,” he said back, shrugging before he quirked an eyebrow and a small smile showed up on his face.

She was about to ask him what her excuse was exactly, according to him, when Max came back with Lucas and grabbed her by the arm.

“There you are,” Max told her. “I thought you were walking behind us!” She turned to look at Mike then, her eyebrows rising and a devious smile playing on her lips. “Did you join a motorcycle gang before coming here?”

“Yeah, actually,” he told her, pointing to the leather jacket that she was wearing. ”It’s the same one as yours. You missed initiation, by the way.”

“Getting the jacket was the initiation,” she played along seriously, rolling her eyes and pointing a judging thumb his way to El who was just giggling at the both of them. The song around them changed into one by Madonna and Max and El’s eyes lit up.

“Let’s go dance,” El told her, rather than asked, grabbing her by the hand to pull her into the living room where everyone else had created a sort of dance floor. She turned behind her shoulder to see Mike was just standing there, looking at her. 

“You coming,” she asked him, an eyebrow raised, and he quickly followed them into the living room.

“He likes you,” Max whispered to her, as they found an empty space to dace.

El saw the smile on Mike’s face and she leaned in to whisper, “I think he does.”

Will and Dustin made their way over to them, too, both of them having found a spot on the couch to sit down at but leaving it to go to them. The six of them danced together in a group to pop song after pop song that blasted through the speakers set up across the house. El tried hard not to stare at Mike but he was dancing so close to her, and he looked like such a dork, and soon she didn’t know if her heart was beating fast from all the dancing or from how she felt looking at him.

It was after a Whitney Houston song that the group had all collectively decided it was time for a break from all of their dancing, which was mostly just jumping and twirling and weird arm moves. Except for Lucas, who looked like his moves had been taken straight out of the music videos they showed on MTV, and had caught the attention of some of the people dancing around them more than once.

“Do you want to get something to drink,” Mike asked El, and she quickly nodded, letting him lead the way to the kitchen where all the drinks were. Their friends had followed them, but Max and Lucas had ended up stopping at the beer pong table, El hearing her best friend ask the people there for a chance to play. Dustin and Will, meanwhile, had been stopped by one of Jennifer’s friends to ask them something.

“What can I get you,” Mike asked El, surrounded by bottles and cans of beer, wine coolers, tequila, vodka, and probably other alcoholic beverages that El couldn’t distinguish from each other. She looked around at all the drinks and frowned.

“Isn’t there any soda,” she asked him. She didn’t want to get drunk around him and risk anything, especially since things with him had been going well, unbelievably well, so far. 

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. He looked around the tables and the kitchen island before walking her to the back of the kitchen where the refrigerator was. He opened it up and sure enough found soda cans in there. 

“Is Coke okay,” he asked her, already taking it out of the fridge and handing it to her. 

“Are we allowed to take one,” she asked him, eyeing it suspiciously.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, and he reached his hand in to grab another for himself. She looked at him with an incredulous look on her face and he simply popped open his soda. “It’s okay to take from the rich, El. They’re not gonna miss it.” He smiled at her and tapped his can against hers before taking a drink of it. 

“I can’t believe the leather jacket changed you so much.” She shook her head, opening up her own Coke and then taking a sip. 

He laughed at her and she started laughing, too. 

It was so normal. The two of them standing in the kitchen and laughing and acting like they had been friends for years. Part of El felt guilty, knowing that it could have been this way with them for a much longer time if she hadn’t been so stupid, but she pushed the thought away. She was there with Mike now, and it was all that mattered. 

Her back was pressed onto the kitchen countertop as she looked up at Mike and laughed as he told her funny stories about his clueless Republican father. He was telling her about the time he got in trouble for writing “Fuck Ronald Reagan” in a bathroom stall when he was in the eighth grade because Dustin had dared him to when she heard Max’s voice from across the room.

“I demand a rematch or I will cross this table and shove my fist so far down your throat it’s going to be coming out of your ass!”

Mike and El’s eyes widened at the sound of the insult and they quickly rushed away to see Lucas trying to soothe Max, whose teeth were gritted and face was flushed as she stared down her opponents on the other side of the table.

“What happened,” El asked Lucas, but Max answered before he was able to.

“They’re cheating,” Max yelled, pointing her finger to the other group. “All of them! They made me lose!”

“We did not cheat,” someone said, and Max looked like she was about to lunge towards them before Lucas grabbed her by the waist.

“Let’s go get you some water,” Lucas told Max.

“No! I want a rematch,” she screamed and he only tightened his grip on her.

“Jesus,” Mike laughed from beside El, causing Max to turn to look at him.

Her face turned into one of disbelief before it went back to anger.

“You copied my look, you jerk,” she yelled at him, pointing at his jacket. “One of us is going to have to go home and change!”

“Seriously,” he asked her, still laughing. El elbowed him in the ribs to stop but he only continued.

“Unless you want to fight, too!”

“Oh my God,” Mike wheezed, clutching onto his sides. 

Max made another try to hit him, but Lucas started dragging her away. El meanwhile apologized to the other group and grabbed Mike by the arm to pull him away and back into the kitchen. He went to sit down at one of the stools but only slipped off, making him laugh even harder and causing El to start laughing along with him. She dropped down to sit on the floor next to him, his eyes still closed from laughing so much.

“I’ve never seen her so mad,” he said, his laughter turning into giggles that made him look like as boyish as he had in the yearbook picture she saw framed in his house. She wondered if she would have liked him at twelve and thirteen.  _(She decided she probably would have.)_

“Hey! She has a good reason to be,” El chuckled, leaning over to straighten down the collar of his jacket. “She was right. You totally stole her look.”

“So you’re telling me you’re not into this whole leather jacket look,” he asked her, wiggling his eyebrows and making her laugh a little again.

“It’s fine,” she shrugged and then added softly, “I just kind of miss your sweaters.”

She looked at him and his smile morphed into something more gentle rather than teasing, and she felt the familiar swoop in her stomach that she had felt the day before. He gulped and she suddenly felt nervous in anticipation of what he was going to do. After what seemed like centuries of waiting, he finally opened his mouth to speak.

“Can we go somewhere to talk,” he asked her, his voice filled with worry but still sweet enough to let her know that he wasn’t going to say anything bad.

She nodded without saying anything and he stood up before her, extending his hand down towards her. She took it with one of hers, the other still holding her soda can, and stood up beside him, interlacing their fingers. And she realized that holding hands with Mike Wheeler was one of the best feelings in the world. If she was lucky, she’d get to hold his hand forever.

He squeezed her hand once, his face blushing, before he started to lead her through all the people in search of a quiet place to talk. There seemed to be people everywhere and when he reached the door leading to the backyard, the people who were back there almost trampling them trying to get inside. Apparently the rain that had been expected that night had come sooner than expected, and it came down on their little town hard.

Mike bit his lip and looked around before his face lit up. El looked in the direction he was looking at before he started to pull her towards the direction of a hallway. There was a closed door at the end of it and when he opened it there were stairs leading down somewhere.

“I haven’t seen anybody go in here,” he shrugged.

“Lead the way, then,” El smiled, and that time she was the one who squeezed his hand. He smiled back at her and they walked down the steps.

But when they reached the bottom, they found a group of about fifteen people sitting down on the floor in a circle instead of on the empty couches that surrounded them. Among them were Stacy, Brenda, Wendy, and Ivy, along with another handful of popular football players and cheerleaders. El dropped Mike’s hand at the sight of the gossipy girls in her grade, hoping they hadn’t noticed them.

She was about to whisper to Mike to go someplace else, and he looked like he was about to say the same thing, when a squeaky voice chimed in from the circle.

“Oh my god! Wheeler and Hopper?! You guys are here,” Wendy asked in disbelief, everyone else in the circle turning in their direction.

“Yup,” El forced a smile, before quickly coming up with a lie. “But we were just about to leave! We were just looking for Jennifer to thank her for inviting us.”

Mike nodded beside her, throwing her an impressive glance and she wanted to bite back with something witty _(Yes, she was a far more impressive liar than he was. She had managed to lie to herself about her feelings for him for the past months, hadn’t she?)_ but held herself back.

“Oh my god, no,” Brenda exclaimed in false disappointment. “Come and join us! We were just about to play!”

“Play what,” Mike asked and El wanted nothing more than to reach over and punch him in the arm, because for once couldn’t he stop questioning everything?

Brenda moved her hand in an attempt to tell them to go over there and El rolled her eyes as they walked over and the group made some room for them to sit down and join their circle. Only when they sat down did they notice the empty wine bottle in the center. El’s eyes widened at the sight of it and she felt Mike tense up next to her. She just wanted to grab his hand and run.

“You guys have played Seven Minutes in Heaven Before, right,” some jock asked them.

“Yeah,” El choked out, trying to calm herself down. 

There was no way they could get out of it now. It’s not like she could say she was dating Mike _(because she wasn’t)_ as an excuse for them not to participate. And if they did leave, they’d surely get made fun of. And what if Mike wanted to play? There was nothing reassuring her that maybe he did want to kiss someone else there. All the girls there were certainly prettier and more popular than her.

“Okay good,” Stacy smiled beside Mike. She spun the bottle and it landed on a football player across from her, who smirked and got up eagerly. It was then that El noticed there was a closet somewhere near the back and the two of them got inside and closed the door.

“And seven minutes starting now,” some girl said, staring down at her watch.

The group chatted while the two were in there, talking about how they were excited for  _Saturday Night Live_ to come back, and El felt distracted by all of them discussing different sketches. El leaned back on her hands and Mike did the same, his pinky finger brushing against hers and she bit down on her bottom lip to hide her smile.

Suddenly though the girl who was keeping time screamed, “Seven minutes! Get out of there!” Stacy and the football player came out, Stacy no longer wearing her hair in a ponytail and the guy with his t-shirt disheveled. They sat down and then they all looked to Mike.

“Is it my turn,” he gulped, as if barely remembering that he was also part of the game. They all nodded and El leaned up again, nervous as he sat up and reached for the bottle to spin it. 

In her head she mumbled “Please be me, please be me,” desperately wishing she had some sort of powers to just make the bottle stop and land on her. But she had no control of it and when the bottle finally did stop, it was pointed towards Chrissy Carter. And she felt her heart drop.

Because Chrissy Carter was a varsity cheerleader with perfect blonde hair and bangs and tan legs that went on for miles, and she was just a Plain Jane. 

El looked to Mike, who looked nervous and sorry, and she wanted him to say something among the group who was hollering and giving them wolf-whistles. She wanted him to tell them that he wasn’t going in the closet with Chrissy because the only reason they had even ventured down there was so that they could talk about them. Him and her. Not him and Chrissy.

But Chrissy stood up, a genuine smile on her face, and then Mike stood up and didn’t say anything. He simply followed her and she didn’t even get to see his face before the door closed.

She wanted to cry. 

Instead, she simply drank her soda and tried to focus on the popular Tiffany song playing upstairs. The group had changed the topic of conversation to the school’s winter formal theme, but El didn’t say anything. The song had finished and changed, and she kept her eyes stuck on the the closet door, as if it was going to somehow make Mike come out of there faster.

He liked her. She knew.

But he was a teenage boy and her dad had told her that teenage boys were never to be trusted. How was she supposed to believe that him and Chrissy were just in there talking?

Anger started to sneak up on her just like the sadness had and she found herself absentmindedly crushing the Coke can in her hand.

“El, are you okay,” she heard someone ask, and it was then that she turned her attention back to the group and away from the door.

“Actually, I’m not feeling okay,” she said honestly, and inhaled to force back a tear that was threatening to spill. “Can you just tell Mike I felt sick and left?”

They nodded and she stood up, brushing her dress down, and heading upstairs when she heard the loud “Seven minutes!” behind her as an announcement to Mike and Chrissy to get out. 

Almost instantaneous, Mike opened the door and he looked to the group before his gaze fell. He looked around before he saw that El was on the staircase where she had stayed frozen and looking at him when he had come out.

They only made eye contact for a moment before El looked away and started to head back upstairs. She heard Mike say something to the group and then heard footsteps behind her, but she didn’t want to turn back and look. She just kept walking, faster and faster away from him.

“El,” he called behind her. “El, can you please just stop.”

She continued to ignore him as she walked past all the people in the house who had broken out into drunkenly singing along to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” as it started to play through the speakers. She made her way outside the front door, instantly feeling cold as the cool raindrops started to fall on her head and pale shoulders and thin dress.

“El, stop! Wait,” Mike yelled, as he followed her outside and closed the door behind him.

“Leave me alone, Mike,” she tried to tell him firmly, trying to keep her teeth from clattering. She crossed her arms in front of her and walked away from the house and down the tree-lined sidewalk. She didn’t make it very far before Mike jogged up to her and stood in front of her.

“El, hold on,” he said. And she looked into his eyes that she loved so much and couldn’t force herself to look away. He shook his head and probably noticed that she was shivering as he went to take off his jacket. “Take my jacket, you’re going to get sick.”

He draped it across her shoulders, holding it in place until she finally gave in and put her arms through the sleeves. It was warm and fell past her hips and it comforted her immediately. Maybe it also had to do with the fact that his hands were still on the collar of the jacket and he was looking at her with so much depth it could no doubt rival the ocean.

“Are you mad at me,” he asked her softly, and she remembered that,  _oh yeah. He’s an asshole._

“No, Michael. I’m ecstatic right now,” she answered sarcastically. “Can’t you tell by the sunshine that’s shining out of my ass?”

“I wasn’t paying attention to your ass. I’ve only been paying attention to your face since the first day I met you.”

“Stop it,” she grumbled, pushing his hands away from her and looking down at her now soaked converse.

“Why are you mad?”

Her head instantly snapped to look at him and her voice was so loud that it seemed to shock her, too.

“Because you’re confusing!”

“ _I’m_ confusing,” he asked her, his voice just as loud and he looked at her with a look of disbelief.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, laughing almost bitterly before her voice turned back to the same one she used whenever she ranted in class, full of anger and passion and reason. “You spend months hating me and fighting with me and calling me nicknames, and then you ask me out and you act like a jerk, and then you get detention and apologize, and you almost kiss me and spend the whole night flirting with me, and then you go and makeout with Chrissy Carter and act like it’s not a big deal-.”

“I didn’t kiss Chrissy,” he interrupted, his voice calm.

_What?_

“You expect me to believe that,” El asked him with raised eyebrows and a scoff.

“Yes because it’s the truth!”

And El didn’t know where to go from there, because all of her anger was based on the idea that he had kissed one of the prettiest girls in school instead of hers. But now that he apparently hadn’t, she didn’t know what to use as fuel for her anger.

“Well then you’re an idiot because she’s gorgeous,” she said dramatically, obviously still wanting to argue. “Even I would have made out with her if I had the chance to!”

He looked at her with a confused look on his face at her remark and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Did you want me to kiss her?

“No! I just…,” and she trailed off, tucking one of her now ruined and wet curls behind her ear. Softly, hesitantly she asked him, “Why didn’t you kiss her?”

He took a step closer to her, never losing eye contact with her, before he said with the most assurance she’d ever heard in his voice, “I don’t want to kiss anyone who isn’t you.”

She almost melted, her face flushed and words flustered as her eyes widened and looked at him. Later she would be angry at herself for not simply doing that, but at that moment she simply yelled at him again.

“You can’t just say shit like that, Mike!”

“What?!” He almost laughed, his eyes still looking at hers and his lips turned into an amused smile.

She continued on with her rant, still not knowing why she was continuing to argue when he had just said the most romantic thing he’d ever said to her. He had confessed his feelings to her and instead of letting him prove what he’d told her, she didn’t stop talking. 

“You can’t just be romantic and say that you only want to kiss me and you think that I’m beautiful and that you don’t stare at my ass because you only pay attention to my face, which is rude by the way because I have a great ass, when you were such a jerk before! I mean c’mon, Mike! This is so confusing! We hated each other and now you flirt with me and I don’t even know if we’re friends and I wish you would just tell me how you felt about me so that I knew what we were-.”

And before she knew what was happening, before she even saw it coming, he leaned down and cupped her cheeks in the palms of his hands in one swift motion, and pressed his lips onto hers. 

Her eyes closed on instinct at the impact, her brain not even fully registering the fact that Mike was kissing her until a few seconds later.

_Mike Wheeler was kissing her._

His lips were soft as they moved gently across hers and she didn’t know what to do, the electricity coursing through her veins at the feeling of his mouth against hers overwhelming her beyond belief. He tasted like fruit punch, and felt warm despite the cold raindrops that were continuing to fall on the both of them. She hadn’t even moved her hands, still at her side as he held her face in his hands, too afraid to move if it meant he’d stop kissing her.

Just as she was about to risk it and reach her hands up to hold his or run through his hair or press him closer to her by grabbing onto his waist,  _anything_ , he stopped kissing her and pulled away slowly. 

She opened her eyes at the feeling of the loss of him and saw this his eyes were barely opening, too. She felt breathless at the sight of him with red cheeks and smeared lipstick on his mouth. He looked nervous, his eyes filled with worry, and he started to lean away from her, taking his hands away from her face.

He licked his lips, his voice low and coarse as he started, “El, I’m sorr-.”

But he never completed his apology. He didn’t need to.

El reached her hand up and grabbed him by the back of his neck, lifted herself on the tip of her toes, and pulled him down to her so that she could kiss him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to take the time to thank those of you who were patient with me and didn't bombard me with requests to update and just allowed me take my time with this chapter.
> 
> for those of you who aren't aware bc i don't really mention it on here as much as on tumblr, i am a full time college student. not only that but i'm majoring in english literature which means i have A LOT of required readings and papers to write, as well as involvement with other things around my school. 
> 
> i LOVE writing mike and eleven, but this isn't my job. school will always come first to me and i would just really appreciate it if you guys could respect that?? you don't have to worry about me "forgetting this story", i promise i work on it whenever i have free time. and for future chapters, if i don't update every friday, it'd just be super cool it you guys could be respectful and not rude about me not updating?? 
> 
> that being said (did anyone even read this far lol?), i sincerely hope you enjoyed this chapter (i definitely did!) and that it was worth the wait. there's only about five chapters left in this story and i'm very excited for them :)


	7. one time...two time..three time thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> El and Mike kiss. (that's it. that's the plot)

Kissing El Hopper was the best feeling in the world.

If anyone had asked him yesterday what the best feeling in the world was he would have said staring at her or holding her hand, but kissing her definitely tops all of that.

When he had kissed her, all he had been able to think about before was how cute she looked rambling about him and how ridiculous she kind of sounded. He had been staring at her mouth, spewing all kind of nonsensical words about how he was confusing and so before he was able to stop himself, he decided to show her exactly how felt about her.

Cradling her soft face in his hands and kissing her even softer lips with his own had been euphoric. Even with his eyes closed, he saw bursts of colors the longer he kissed her, her lips moving beneath his creating a kaleidoscope of all the good feelings in the world mixed together especially for him.

But then he had realized that maybe she didn’t want to be kissed.  _Girls should never be kissed without their permission first_ , Nancy had told him once, and suddenly he felt like an idiot. Yes, El had practically told him that she had romantic feelings for him (a fact that made his heart race) and yes, she was kissing him back but maybe he shouldn’t have just kissed her out of nowhere.

He pulled back at the realization that what he did was considered wrong, a pit of guilt expanding in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t even want to open his eyes, afraid that El was going to look mad at him, but he forced himself to. If she was mad at him, wanted to yell or hit him, she had every right to. 

His eyes fluttered open and he saw hers opening, too. There was a dazed, almost breathless look on her face, and he wondered if he looked like that, too or if he looked terrified. At that moment he was feeling a little bit of both.

About to apologize, he tried to find the words in the back of his throat, prepared for what El was going to say.

“El, I’m sorr-,” he started to say, but then she grabbed him by the back of his neck and pressed her lips back onto his.

And  _holy shit, he couldn’t believe it._

First, he had kissed El, a move that he had seconds ago convinced himself was the most idiotic thing he’d ever done. But here she was, completely shutting him up by kissing him.

_El Hopper was kissing him._

He never thought it would have happened. The chances of the prettiest girl in the whole world kissing him was probably less than 1%, but yet here she was, moving her lips across his and proving once again that she did not care whatsoever about chances. 

The only other time a girl had kissed him had been when he was six years old. Jennifer Hayes had come up to him on Valentine’s Day, him and Will in their usual spot on the playground swings. She had given him a pink, glittery card and then quickly planted a kiss on his lips before blushing and running away to her friends. He had thought about it for months, the kiss that lasted less than a second and didn’t mean anything, waiting in anticipation for another girl to run up to him and kiss him someday.

Fast forward ten years later, and she had still been the only girl that he had ever kissed. 

Until literally right at this moment.

Because at the moment, El Hopper had moved her hand from the back of his neck and moved it, along with her other hand, up to his head where her fingers were threaded in his hair. At the moment, he had his two arms around her, hands splayed across her back onto the cool leather of his jacket that she was still wearing and trying to press her as close to him as humanely possible. At the moment, all his senses were overwhelmed by her: his sight still bursting in a prismatic wonderland, his smell only taking in the scent of her floral perfume, his hearing focused on the sound of her breathing against him, his taste concentrated on how she tasted like coke and cherries, and his touch centering all its attention on how she felt pressed up next to him, her insanely soft lips moving at the same speed of his.

He was overwhelmed by El a lot, but this,  _all_ of him focused on her, was the kind of overwhelmed he wanted to feel for the rest of his life.

He kind of wished he had never kissed Jennifer before. He knew it didn’t count, but still. Kissing El was the greatest feeling in the world, a feeling that made him feel like he was  _meant_  to do this. It would have been cool if she had been the only girl he’d ever kissed because he wasn’t lying. He really didn’t want to kiss anyone who wasn’t her.

That’s what he had told Chrissy Carter, too. 

When the bottle spin had landed on her instead of El (no matter how hard he had been begging for the bottle to land on El or himself so that he’d get a free pass), the bottle landed on the blonde sitting across from him. Because  _of-fucking-course_  it would. Any other guy would have been ecstatic to be alone with her for seven minutes, meanwhile he was wishing for an earthquake to collapse the ceiling on his head.

A part of him had hoped that she would protest, say something rude about how there was no way she was going to kiss a dweeb like him and he would be saved, but she didn’t. Chrissy just smiled and stood up, and he gulped before following her into the closet.

The room was small and dusty, with almost no space and only a dimming flashbulb above them, and Mike felt like he couldn’t breathe. He walked to the back of it and leaned against it, looking down at his watch so that he could count the seven minutes. Seven minutes and then he’d back with El and he’d try to feign an emergency so that they could leave and they could talk.

He wanted to tell her that she was beautiful, that he thought she was beautiful since the first day he met her, and he knew he was probably going to ruin the friendship they’d just started but that he liked her. He liked her so much he couldn’t take it, and he wanted to know if there was any way, any chance, that she maybe she felt the same. 

And then she’d say “yes” and they would kiss and he’d ask her out on a date. Or she’d say “no” and he would accept her answer but secretly wallow in sadness as he remained her new platonic friend. Either option sounded better than what he had been currently doing, which was trying to avoid the weird way Chrissy was looking at him.

“You look really good in that jacket, Wheeler,” she told him, taking small steps towards him until she was leaning on her side facing him.

_Fuck this jacket._

“Umm,” he started unsure, shifting from one foot to the other. “Thanks.”

She reached out to try and grab one of his curls, but he leaned out of her touch, wincing at the surprised look on her face.

“I didn’t know your hair was so curly,” she tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He noticed. 

“Yeah,” he said slowly, looking back down at his watch. Still six minutes left to go.

“You don’t like me,” he heard Chrissy say, and he looked up to see her biting her lip, her face unsure. He felt kind of bad, figuring that she probably wasn’t used to rejection. But he wasn’t going to screw things up with El for a girl who he didn’t like.

“I don’t,” he said, his voice small but sure. “And it’s not you, okay? You’re very pretty. But...”

And he trailed off, wondering if it was the best idea to confide his secret to a girl he was barely talking to for the first time, but he figured that everyone else already knew to some extent. And maybe people would know for sure know soon if things went well with El.

“But there’s only girl I want to kiss and you’re not her,” he finished.

Her eyes turned soft, a tiny smile playing at her lips and she crossed her arms in front of her.

“So the rumors are true,” she asked. “About you and El?”

“I mean,” he started, sliding down to sit on the floor and Chrissy followed. “Kind of? We’re...complicated.”

“But you like her?”

“Yeah,” he smiled without hesitation, looking down at his hands laying on his lap. “I really like her.”

“Aww,” Chrissy squealed, shaking Mike’s shoulder and he started blushing, the sound immediately reminding him of Nancy when she teased him. “That’s so cute!”

“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes, trying hard not to grin but not being able to stop himself when he saw the goofy grin on Chrissy’s face as she pulled her knees up to her chest.

“Tell me about her,” she insisted.

So he told her about how she was the smartest person he knew, having a perfect 4.0 GPA and perfect attendance. He told her what a great singer and actress she was, about how she had been Dorothy in the spring musical and was cast as Helena for the fall play. He told her about how good she was with his little sister, and how kind she was with everyone else. He told her about how she always insulted him, but how he sometimes caught her staring at him. He told her she was funny and creative and romantic, even if she tried to pretend she wasn’t.

“And she’s pretty,” Chrissy added.

“She’s gorgeous,” Mike exhaled, leaning his had back against the wall. He glanced as his watch, realizing there was only a minute left until their seven minutes would be over, and stood up. “Shit!”

Chrissy stood up, too, dusting herself off and she smiled at him. 

“Good luck,” she wished him.

“Thanks” he let out a breathy laugh. 

Only a few more seconds, his hand was on the doorknob ready to go out and get his girl, waiting for them to call out “Seven minutes!” When he did hear it, he immediately opened the door, ready to get El.

And now there they were, standing on the barely lighted sidewalk, in the rain that seemed to be pouring down on them even harder, but both of them completely too enveloped in each other to care. So obviously, Chrissy’s send off had worked.

Mike moved his grip from El’s back to hold onto her hips, a gesture that caused her to tighten her fingers in his hair and shiver at the touch. Their mouths were still fused together, only taking short, synchronized breaks to catch a breath and have their lips meet again. He felt her tongue brush against his lips almost unsurely, and was about to open his mouth to meet it fully when a car horn honking behind them completely separated them.

“Get a room, assholes,” Mike heard a guy’s voice yell behind him, the car speeding down the street honking a few more times at them before it was gone and out of sight.

His eyes were still only focused on El, her cheeks flushed and lipstick smeared and eyes wide and bright even though it was dark outside. He stayed there, staring down at her, until he found a wide grin spreading on his face. He moved a hand from her waist to tuck some hair behind her ear and away from her face, her curls completely soaked and messy.

He lit his hand linger on her cheek, a small smile gracing her face, and it felt like butterflies in his stomach.

“Hi,” he whispered, moving the hand that was still on her hip to rest on the other side of her face.

“Hi,” El whispered back, a small giggle escaping. She got back on her tiptoes, and he thought she was going to kiss him again, but she reached out her thumb and started gently wiping at his lips. “You took all my lipstick.”

“Well I did tell you I liked it,” he smirked, her hand still on his mouth and she let out a louder laugh than before. 

He reached out his own thumb to clean up the lipstick around her mouth too before placing his hand back on her cheek. She planted her feet back firmly on the ground, moving her hands to hold onto his, stroking the backs of it gently. They stayed there, their eyes never leaving each other, secretive smiles shared between them, both acting completely oblivious to the storm that was still happening until Mike let out an involuntary shudder at the cold wind hitting his drenched t-shirt and jeans.

El grabbed his hands away from her face, intertwining their hands and moving them down between them.

“We should probably go inside,” she suggested, her tone sounding almost disappointed despite her still smiling face. “Before we get hypothermia.”

“It’d be worth it,” he shrugged, his thought immediately leaving his mouth before he was able to stop himself. 

“You’re an idiot,” she scoffed, but she quickly leaned up to kiss the corner of his mouth before starting to pull him back towards the house. 

She was still holding onto his hand, palms pressed against each other, when she reached the doorknob to open the door, but she dropped it upon entering. He tried not to frown at the feeling of missing her hand, missing her  _touch_ , already and was luckily quickly distracted.

“Where the hell have you guys been,” Dustin asked angrily, speed walking up to them with Will in tow. “And why are you guys drenched?!”

“We were having a chat outside,” Mike answered casually, not missing the smirk that showed up on El’s face through the corner of his eye.

“Well why you guys were out talking about God knows what, Max almost got in a fight,” Dustin exclaimed.

“What,” El screeched, her smile immediately dropping into a look of concern. “Where is she?”

“Kitchen, c’mon,” Dustin said, grabbing at her wrist and pulling her towards the area. 

Mike was about to follow when Will put his hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Let’s go find you a towel,” Will suggested, looking him up and down with concern. 

Mike turned to look where El had left, barely catching a glimpse of his leather jacket, before he looked back at Will and nodded. He followed him upstairs to where one of the bathrooms were, closing the door behind them, and going through the cabinets before he found one with towels.

“So,” Will started, handing one to Mike. “What were you and El talking about outside?”

Mike tried not to blush as he unfolded the towel, using it to dry up his hair a bit before running it down his arms.

“Umm,” he hesitated. 

_What was he supposed to say? That they were talking about their feelings for each other and had basically confessed that they liked each other and that was pretty much it before they started making out?_

“Just stuff,” he shrugged, squeezing his t-shirt over the sink to get some water out. 

“Stuff,” Will echoed, quirking an eyebrow up.

“Yeah,” Mike nodded, going to put the towel up to his hair again before going over to the hamper in the corner of the bathroom to throw it in there.

“Then why was she wearing your jacket,” Will asked, making Mike stop in his tracks before he went to the cabinet to grab another towel.

“Because it was raining outside,” Mike answered. “And she didn’t have a jacket, and my mother raised me to be a gentleman.”

Will scoffed at that, but Mike ignored him. He simply unlocked the door and started heading back downstairs to find El and give her a towel so she could dry off. Behind him, Will was giving him funny glances, but he didn’t have time to explain to him what had happened. He didn’t even know if he was supposed to.

_Was El going to tell other people what had happened?_

He was stuck in his thoughts when he ran into the girl in question, her body crashing into his. Her face had collided into his chest and she quickly let out an audible gasp at the impact.

“Sorry, El,” he said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder before pulling it away.  _Again, no idea what he was supposed to do._

“You need to stop running into me,” she told him, rubbing a hand at her forehead from where he’d accidentally hit her

“Maybe if you weren’t three feet tall, people would actually see you,” he teased.

“I’m not that short, asshole!”

He gave her a small smile before handing her the towel he had in his hands. She took it with a small smile of her own before quickly patting her hair to make it somewhat dry.

“How’s Max,” he asked.

“Terrible,” El sighed, running the towel down her legs to dry them and he had to force himself not to stare at how amazing they looked. “Apparently some girl told her something snarky and Max grabbed her by the hair and pulled some out. Lucas had to hold her down and he ended up calling the police station so my dad is on his way to pick us up.”

“Oh, so you’re leaving already,” Mike asked, trying not to sound disappointed. He wanted to spend more time with her. He didn’t care if they were kissing or holding hands. He just wanted to be with her.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “But you’re probably going to be leaving soon, too. Lucas is pissed.” 

“Shit,” Mike groaned. When Lucas was mad at Max, he took it out on everyone else, which he meant he would not be hearing the end of it for the entire car ride back to his house.

“At least your best friend isn’t drunk and trying to fight everyone,” El rolled her eyes. “I’m going to have to take care of her all night. Even after she just screamed at me for stealing her look.”

Mike looked down at his jacket and laughed, receiving a smack to the chest by El.

“It’s not funny,” she said, but her face said otherwise, her eyes sparkling and a giggle escaping her lips. He was about to ask if she was going to give his jacket back to him, since technically she was stealing  _his_  look (compensation for the stolen lipstick), when the doorbell rang.

“That’s my dad,” El said. “Lucas said he was going to ring the doorbell and wait outside to help get Max into the car.”

Lucas and Max came into view then, connected at the hip. Lucas was holding Max by the waist with one arm while one of hers slung over his shoulder so that he could hold her hand. She was leaning onto him and Mike was surprised that Lucas didn’t seem like he was struggling that much to hold onto her weight.

“Your dad’s here,” Lucas told El, his teeth gritted as he moved past them and towards the door. 

Mike felt something angry rise in his chest when he saw the annoyed look Lucas gave her. He wanted to tell Lucas something, about how he didn’t have any right to be mad at El when it wasn’t her fault that his girlfriend had gotten drunk. Especially not when it was El’s dad who’d come to save them and it was her who was going to go take care of her. 

And then he stopped himself because,  _holy shit_ , he was actually feeling protective over El. 

“I should go,” El told Mike, bringing his attention back to her. She slipped his jacket off of her and handed it back to him, their fingertips brushing and causing their eyes to widen for a brief moment before it gave way to a shy glance.

“’Night, El,” he whispered.

“’Night, Mike,” she whispered back. 

She gave him a small smile and a wave before walking outside and shutting the door behind her. He stayed there, looking at the closed door, secretly hoping she would waltz back in and pull him down by shirt and kiss him goodbye. But she didn’t. 

Instead, Lucas came back in, his face still angry.

“Put your jacket on,” he told Mike, shoving past him. “I’m going to find Dustin and Will so we can leave.”

Mike rolled his eyes at his attitude, but did as he said, not wanting to anger him anymore. When he slipped his arm through the jacket, he went to lean on the wall by the door. He put his hands into his pockets and that was when he felt something inside. 

He pulled it out to reveal a napkin, white and folded and stained with what looked like punch. When he unfolded it, he felt his heart begin to race as he stared down at was inside. There, in rushed handwriting, were the words, “Call me. -El,” followed by a seven-digit number and a perfectly drawn heart. And  _wow,_  blue ink had never looked so beautiful before.

A finger traced over the heart, a goofy grin appearing on his face as he thought about El quickly writing down her phone number for him to have. He thought about her sneaking past her friend to grab the closest thing to write on and putting the napkin into his pocket. Because she wanted him to call her. 

_She_  wanted  _him_  to call her!

He felt like dancing, like flying, like running all across Hawkins to find her house and kiss her and then run back to find a phone and put her number to good use. And he never wanted to run.

“What do you have there,” Will asked, walking up to him with Lucas and Dustin. 

“Nothing,” Mike coughed, his smile fading as he stuffed the napkin into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Are you ready to go,” Lucas asked him, sounding a little more relaxed even if it still didn’t look like he was in the best mood. 

“Whenever you are,” Mike replied. 

Lucas opened the door to the house, the three others following him as they walked across the lawn and out to the street where he had parked his car. They all got into their seats quietly, all of them trying to give Lucas space. The only sound that filled the car was the noise of the heaters, and quickly the sound of Will snoring in the backseat. 

He was the first to be dropped off, followed by Dustin, leaving Mike alone in the car with Lucas for a good five minutes. They were almost at his house when Lucas spoke up, the sound of his voice startling Mike who had just been staring out the window the whole time, still thinking about El.

“Sorry,” Lucas mumbled.

“What,” Mike asked, turning his head to look at him.

“I said I’m sorry,” Lucas said louder, taking his eyes off the road for a split second so he could look at Mike. “I’m sorry for taking my anger out on you and El and the guys.”

“It’s okay,” Mike shrugged.

“No, it’s not,” Lucas protested, pulling up to Mike’s driveway. He put the car in park and put on the brakes before turning to him. “Max just makes me so crazy sometimes and I don’t want to yell at her because I love her, so I yell at other people.”

“Are you saying you don’t love me,” Mike asked in feigned sadness, receiving a punch in the arm.

“Can you shut up,” Lucas scolded. “I’m trying to apologize!”

“Okay, sorry,” Mike laughed.

“Anyways, I shouldn’t have been rude and I’m sorry.”

Lucas stuck out his hand and Mike took it, shaking it and putting an end to their argument quickly. Mike unbuckled his seatbelt, about to leave, when Lucas stopped him.

“So how’d it go with El?”

“What do you mean,” Mike asked, turning to look at him.

“Mike, seriously,” he asked, his tone irritated and expression dull.

“What?”

“You look at her all like,” he started, before forcing a smile on his face and making his voice high-pitched to imitate him. “Hi, El! You look so beautiful, El! I’ll quote you Shakespeare from now until I die, if you marry me! Please, oh please-”

“Shut up, Lucas,” Mike grumbled, putting his face down to hide the blush he felt rising on his cheeks, much to Lucas’ amusement. “It’s not like that.”

“Well it’s definitely like that for El.”

“Why?”

“I,” he started, and then burst out into laughter. “I told her you weren’t at the party when she got there and her face dropped so quickly, I swore it looked like someone had just told her her dog died or something.”

“You’re lying,” Mike rolled his eyes. 

“Oh, Mikey boy. I wish I was,” Lucas smiled. “And then when she came to check up on Max, she was like, ‘Oh! I better go check up on my boyfriend, Mike, and make sure he’s okay! I don’t want him to get a cold!’”

“She called me her boyfriend,” Mike asked, his eyes wide.  _Oh my god, were they-._

“No, but she didn’t have to.”  _Oh._  “I’m telling you, man. She likes you! It’s only a matter of time before we have two couples in the party!”

Lucas wiggled his eyebrows at him and Mike felt like dying right there, but decided against it since it would probably only further the teasing.

“Cool,” Mike said, opening the car door to avoid any further embarrassment for the night. “I’ll make sure to tell Dustin and Will you’re supportive of their relationship.”

Before Lucas got to say anything else, Mike got out and slammed the car door, throwing him a middle finger and getting one in return. He ran up to the front door, taking his shoes off outside before running inside and up the stairs. He heard his mom somewhere downstairs asking if he had made it back, but he figured she would realize it eventually that he had.

He didn’t want her to see him in his still drenched clothes, knowing that he would probably get into major trouble with her if she did. So instead he ran up to his room to grab dry pajamas and underwear and socks, before running into the bathroom to change before she saw him. He remembered what El had said about hypothermia and decided it was probably a good idea to take a warm shower and some aspirin as a just in case to avoid getting sick.

The radio was still in there, and he looked at it, a smile growing as he remembered how beautiful and carefree El had looked dancing. He almost turned it on before remembering that Holly was asleep and the loud music would wake her up. Instead he settled for humming a tune in his head as he showered and then changed into his warm clothes. He brushed his teeth and quickly made his way to his room, the lights in the house now completely turned off which meant his mom had gone to bed.

Once he closed the door to his bedroom and buried himself under the covers, he prepared himself for another completely restless night of staying up to think about El. For months he’d contemplated her but now he didn’t just have to think about what it was like to hold her or kiss her or hold her hand. He  _knew._  

And the fact that he knew was the best damn feeling in the world.

That night his last thought had been about El as he traced a finger on his lips and tried to take in how amazing it’d been to have hers on them. His dreams throughout the night had consisted of her in a hazy wonderland made up of kissing against lockers and holding hands under tables and sharing smiles across rooms. When he woke up in the morning, his first thought was El, a smile growing on his face as he remembered everything that had happened hours prior.

He wondered if it would happen again, if it would happen again  _soon_ , and decided that he would try to work up the courage to call her later. Maybe they could decide to meet up somewhere later and talk if she wasn’t still busy taking care of Max. He knew the last time she had gotten drunk she’d spent a whole day in bed with her.

Mike made his way down to the kitchen, the smell of pancakes and bacon cooking only temporarily taking him out of his thoughts as he realized he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the day before. His parents and Holly were already seated at the table, about to eat, when they turned to look at him. 

“Good morning, sweetie,” Karen said, getting up from the table to grab him a plate and cup so he could serve himself food. “I didn’t want to wake you up because I thought you’d want to sleep him.”

“I’m hungry,” Mike shrugged, his stomach growling right afterwards to further emphasize the point.

“How was the party,” Karen and Holly asked simultaneously, making Mike roll his eyes because apparently every Wheeler girl only bothered him for gossip.

“It was okay,” he tried to say nonchalantly, practically forcing himself not to smile. It was more than okay, but there was no way he was going to tell them why. 

“Was El there,” Holly asked, raising her eyebrows and Mike laughed at the sly expression on her face.

“Yeah, she was,” he answered, pouring syrup on his pancakes before cutting into them.

“Then it was more than okay.”

He almost choked on his food when Holly said that, having to swallow some orange juice to calm himself down before he turned to his sister who had a very pleased look on her face.

“What does that mean?!”

“You  _loooove_ her,” she squealed, making kiss noises at him and receiving a slight, at most teasing, tug on her ponytail from him to shut her up.

“Mike, leave your sister alone,” Ted spoke up finally, putting his newspaper down to look at him. “So you finally have a girlfriend?”

“No,” he said, his face blushing, and then blushing even harder when his mom looked at him with a knowing look on her face. Holly had one too, but to her credit at least she actually knew about his feelings. “We’re just friends.”

“Well then ask the damn girl out already,” Ted huffed, sipping his coffee.

“ _Ted_ ,” Karen scolded, making Holly hit her head on the chair from throwing her head back laughing and making Mike feel embarrassed.

“It’s true! He’s never going to get a girlfriend if he doesn’t do anything.”

And for once, a bright light shone on Ted Wheeler, and Mike realized what it was finally like to get practical fatherly advice. All his life it had been useless sports metaphors and corrupt political opinions and stories that started with “Back in my day...” But that day, he had given straightforward advice that Mike planned on taking. 

If he wanted El to be his girlfriend, he had to do something.

He scarfed down the rest of his breakfast before clearing up his things in the sink and running upstairs. He was going to get the phone number El had left for him, practice what he was going to say to her, and call her. Whether or not Max was still there.

He went into his room, going into his jacket that he’d carried in with him after his shower and checked the pockets to find that the napkin wasn’t in there. That was when he remembered that he had stuffed it into his jeans and he went to the bathroom where he had put them in the hamper before his shower. Only when he got there, he found that they weren’t there.

“Shit,” he cursed, before screaming even louder throughout the house. “Mom! Where are the jeans I wore yesterday?!”

He ran down the stairs to find that she was about to go up.

“Michael, don’t run in the house-.”

“Where are the jeans,” he asked again, his pulse picking up speed.

“In the washer. You know I start laundry on Saturday’s.”

_Shit, shit, shit._  

He ran away from her, once again ignoring her telling him not to run, as he went down to the basement where the washer and dryer were. The washing machine was still running. Without even thinking, he opened it and stopped the machine, all the wet clothes in there coming to a stop from all the spinning.

He reached his hand in there and looked throughout the clothes until he found the jeans, reaching into the back pocket to find that the napkin that his life practically depended on, was in bits and pieces, the ink smudged and everything incredibly unfixable. He felt his heart drop at the scattered remnants of the phone number, realizing then that there was no way he would be able to talk to El until Monday. 

Max probably still wasn’t home, he didn’t want to ask Lucas or Will for it, and he didn’t even know if Dustin had it or not, but he didn’t want to involve him and have him join his other friends on the teasing. And the phone book, unfortunately, didn’t have her phone number since her dad was the police chief and he didn’t want to receive threats or prank calls. (He knew that after getting upset with her a few months ago and wanting to prank call her, but realizing he couldn’t). 

Mike let himself drop to the floor, the crumbles of napkin still in his hands as he accepted he had no way of talking to El. He couldn’t even go see her because he had no idea where she lived. If he showed up at the police station to talk to ask there, it would be suspicious.

No, he just accepted that he was completely screwed until he saw her on Monday.

He waited the entire weekend, distracting himself with homework and his Atari, hoping that maybe she would be the one to call him, but Monday morning came and it had still been since Friday night that he had last seen her or talked to her. He had taken the napkin pieces up stairs with him on Saturday and put them in his backpack, just in case El asked why he hadn’t called. He wanted her to know it was because he couldn’t, not because he didn’t want to.

And it wasn’t until their English class that Monday afternoon that he saw the girl in question. She was wearing a soft lilac sweater that fell off her right shoulder, and her hair fell in perfect spirals down past her shoulder blades, a matching purple ribbon keeping her curls away from her face, so that he could see it in all its perfect glory. She’d been sitting at her desk, completely entertained by her copy of  _Midsummer’s Night Dream_ , mumbling words to herself every so often before she highlighted something or wrote something down with pencil. 

For a couple minutes he just stared at her from his desk, her and her beauty that she didn’t even have to work for, until she finally noticed he had been looking at her. His face turned pink when she caught him, an action that caused her to smirk.

“Hi,” he mouthed to her, smiling bashfully to her.

“Hi,” she mouthed back, her smile more confident than his. It made him feel like he was going crazy. 

The final bell rang above them and their teacher called everyone’s attention, immediately going into a very long lecture about analyzing poetry that left everyone forcing themselves not to go to sleep. Everyone except for Mike, of course, who was awake on the adrenaline of knowing El was finally in the same place as him again.

When the class ended, Mike was slow about putting his things away, wanting to walk out with El. But before he even had the chance to, a folded piece of notebook paper landed on his desk and his eyes looked up to barely catch a glance of lilac walking out the door.

He exhaled, looking down at the note and feeling a little scared to see what would be inside it. Because maybe El’s smile and smirk his way hadn’t meant what he thought it. He reached for the paper and opened it, a smile quirking up on his lips as he read what was neatly written in the center, college ruled lines in glittery, pink gel pen.  _Meet me in the auditorium in fifteen minutes. -El_

Followed by a row of little hearts, and  _oh god_ , he really,  _really_  liked this girl.

He slipped the paper into his backpack before gathering all his things and leaving towards the cafeteria. He figured he might as well eat something before heading over to the auditorium, and avoid speculation from their friends if they both weren’t there at lunch. 

So he sat down, ate his packed lunch, and pretended to listen to his friends’ conversation about what had happened Friday night at the party, as if they hadn’t all been there. He heard Dustin say how he had beat some jocks at darts and Will mentioning how good the punch had been at the party. The conversation turned over to the Max situation (“Well at least  _you_ can handle your alcohol, Byers.”) 

Max went into defend himself, but Mike couldn’t focus on what she was saying.

“And  _that_ was why I pulled Kelly Maraschino’s stupid hair,” Max finished her argument, looking pointedly at Dustin. Mike looked down at his watch and realized it had been past fifteen minutes, and he quickly got up to leave.

“Where are you going,” Dustin asked him.

“I totally forgot I have to talk Ms. Burke,” he lied, deciding to name his English teacher since nobody else had her, except for him and El. “I have questions about this paper that’s due.”

They all eyed him skeptically, but he simply threw them all casual waves goodbye before he made his way out the cafeteria, through the empty hallways, and towards the auditorium. He put his hand on the door handle, peering inside to make sure El was there.

And she was, standing in the simple yellow spotlight on the stage, her book by her side as she paced around to certain spots of the stage and rehearsed her lines. She was so focused on practicing that she didn’t seem to notice him slip inside and walk down the aisle towards the stage.

She had just knelt down, her face passionate, as she rehearsed her lines as Helena.

“What worser place can I beg in your love,” she recited, looking up to nobody. “And yet a place of high respect with me, --Than to be used as you use your dog?”

“Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,” Mike replied to her, knowing the next line that was in response to hers from studying the play over the summer. He went up the steps near the side of the stage and walked towards her until he was standing right in front of her. “For I am sick when I do look on thee.”

“And I am sick when I look not on you,” she answered back, smiling as he approached her.

He smiled and bent down so he was sitting in front of her, her hands putting down her book as she scooted closer to him.

“Hi,” he told her. 

 

“Hi,” she replied back simply, her facial morphing into something a little more unsure. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Aww,” he let out teasingly. He reached a hand out to poke her side, making her squirm and making him laugh. “Were you worried I was avoiding you or something?”

“No,” she defended quickly, her face getting red in the way he thought nothing could ever be as adorable. 

“Really,” he asked, his eye mischievous as he got a little closer. “Because I heard you were nervous on Friday about me not showing up to the party.”

“That’s not true!”

“Oh no?”

“I could not care less.” She rolled her eyes. 

“So then why are you concerned about me not calling you?” He raised an eyebrow and waited for her to answer, her face looking almost embarrassed and it made him worried. “Hey-.”

“I was just worried you changed your mind about me,” she interrupted, looking at him in the eyes before crossing her legs in front of her and playing with her fingernails.

Was it possible to hear a heart break? Because here was the most amazing girl he’d ever met in his life, a girl he knew had struggled with insecurities and feelings of abandonment and being unloved, scared once again that someone else didn’t want her, and hearing her saying that was what heartbreak sounded like to him. And he decided that he had to be honest with her, he owed it to her.

He moved closer to her until their knees were touching, grabbing her face in the palm of his hand and making her look at him, brown caramel eyes looking into the dark universe in Mike’s. He would always be looking at the universe as long as he was looking at El.

“I’ll never change my mind about you,” he whispered honestly. 

She moved her hand up to his, her eyes still a little hesitant when she asked, “Then why didn’t you call?”

He took his hand away from her and took his backpack off of him, swinging it around to sit beside him and unzipping it so he could get what he needed to show her. He sprinkled the little pieces of napkin on the stage to show her what had happened to it. She raised an eyebrow.

“I forgot to take it out of my jeans before my mom washed them,” he explained. 

Her face broke out into a grin before she started giggling, her hand landing on his shoulder. 

“You’re an idiot.”

“An idiot that you were desperately concerned had lost an interest in you,” he fired back, grabbing the hand that dropped onto his shoulder and interlacing their fingers on his lap.

“I wouldn’t say desperately,” she said slowly, giving him her other hand so he could interlace those, too. 

“Are you sure,” he whispered. He didn’t know who was doing the leaning in but suddenly their faces were only a few inches apart from each other and he felt like his whole body was on fire.

“Positive.”

The air around them seemed to shift into something more. That’s how it always felt with El. More than just enemies. More than just friends. More than just a crush. More than tension. More than passion.  _More._

They stared at each other for a moment, both of their eyes glazed over with desperation, before he leaned in, his mouth practically grazing over hers, and he asked, “Can I kiss you?”

“Please,” she answered in the same small voice, and suddenly he was.

Her lips were still as soft and as sweet as they’d been before and he decided that it just wasn’t possible for El Hopper to be anything other than perfect. He pulled his hands away from her so he could grab onto her waist, the material of her sweater and her jeans under his hands. Hers moved up and around his neck, both of them simultaneously rearranging themselves so they were sitting up on their knees, chest almost pressed together.

His lips moved with hers in a slow rhythm, his hands pulling her closer to him and hers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, so softly that it sent chills all throughout him. She pulled back from the kiss to tug on his lower lip between her teeth before leaving a kiss to it, an action that caused him to swallow down a moan at the back of his throat. He recaptured her mouth with his own, his grip on her tightening and making her whimper, and  _god,_  he really loved kissing her. 

He was about to move his hand up to her hair, to run his fingers through the curls he loved so much, when a sound of a door opening caught both of their attention.

“Shit,” El whispered, pushing him away slightly. They both looked towards the door of the auditorium but didn’t see anyone. But they heard the noise again, and realized that someone was coming through the back door behind the curtains. “Let’s go.”

She quickly got to her feet and grabbed her book and backpack and Mike did the same, following her quiet but quick steps down the stage. It was then they realized the sound of the people talking were the drama teacher and a couple of students, and El’s face looked panicked.

“Hurry,” she whispered to him, grabbing by the hand and pulling him out the door that led to the dressing rooms. Behind him, Mike heard the adult asking what the noise was and to look around for trespassing students, followed by the sound of shuffling feet. The door to the dressing room wouldn’t open and Mike was looking around to see where else they could go, since El had pretty much trapped them in the hallway that had no exit. And he really did not want to get caught and get in trouble again.

_If only he could have some sort of powers to open the door-,_ when suddenly he heard the lock turn and the door opened. He looked down at El who was already grabbing him by the wrist to push him inside, closing the door behind them and locking it.

“How did you open it,” he asked her incredulously. 

“It’s called a key, dumbass,” she answered, showing him the silver little key before shoving it back in her backpack. “I have one to the dressing room because I’m in charge of hair and makeup.”

“Oh,” he blushed. 

“I’m just not allowed to be in here during school hours unless I have a teacher with me.”

She shrugged and moved to the vanity on the side of the room, throwing her backpack onto it to take out a notebook and a pen. He watched as she bent over it, turning to a blank page and writing something. He took the moment to admire her, the way her hair fell into her face and she bit down on her lip. His eyesight went down towards the exposed patch of skin right above her jeans, and she quickly turned her head to look at him and interrupt.

“Are you looking at my ass,” she asked him, partly offended but mostly amused.

He hadn’t (and he was about to when she quickly turned around and walked back towards him) but decided to go along with.

“If I remember correctly, and I do, you got mad at me on Friday for  _not_  staring at your ass.”

“And?”

“Well, I mean, you definitely have the personality for it.”

“You’re such a jerk,” she scowled, pushing against his chest and making him laugh. She held the folded piece of notebook paper up in her fingers. “And I was about to give you this.”

“What is that,” he asked her.

The bell rung above them and they stayed quiet, hearing the voices of people and doors slamming, before they decided it was finally safe to leave and go to class. Before they did, though, El answered him.

“This is your second chance.”

She pressed a kiss to the paper, leaving a pink and sticky lipgloss stain on it, before handing it to Mike. He opened it to find her phone number  _and_  address on it, and looked back at her to see her smiling shyly.

“Use it this time,” she said, going up on the tip of her toes to kiss his cheek before heading towards the door.

“The phone number or the address,” he asked her cheekily, still a little stunned from the whole situation, but wanting to tease her nonetheless. 

“You decide,” she smirked, and then she closed the door behind her. 

_Both. He would definitely use both._

* * *

 

If she didn’t love Max so much, she would have killed her.

Not that she didn’t love her, because she did. Max was her best friend, her sister basically, but she was also the reason El had to stop kissing the cutest boy in the universe and leave him alone at a party, when she could have easily spent the next few hours being happy in his presence. 

Instead, she was in the back of her dad’s truck, bearing Max’s weight and trying not to gag at the smell of beer that reeked off of her. The entire car ride over to her house, El had to hold on to her so she wouldn’t fall over on the seat or go to sleep, listening to her drunk ranting about how much she hated Lucas and men in general and how Jim was next if he “kept looking at her like she was crazy, old man!”

It seemed to take forever before they finally reached the house, Jim putting the vehicle in park and turning it off before going to help El get Max inside.

“Jesus Christ,” he moaned, practically dragging Max through the hallway and to El’s room. “How could you let her get like this?”

El paused, trying to avert her dad’s gaze. She couldn’t very well tell the truth about how she was distracted by black, moppy hair and lips that tasted like fruit punch. She just helped Max lay down on the bed before turning to her dad.

“You know how Max is. Once she sets her mind to something, she does it,” she shrugged. She turned back to Max, who had put a pillow over her face, before smiling at her dad. “You should go back to work. I can take care of her.”

“Okay,” he grumbled. “Take a hot shower, so you don’t get sick from the rain. I’ll be back by morning.”

“Thanks, Dad,” El smiled, standing up to kiss his cheek before pushing him out the door. She just wanted to get Max to bed so she could sleep for hours and hours, and think about everything that had happened that night.

When he left, and she saw through the window that his truck was no longer in the driveway, she went back to her room where her best friend hadn’t moved a bit. 

“Hey Maxie,” she asked her, gently shaking her shoulder, but only being met by a groan. “I’m going to take off your shoes, okay? So you could be more comfortable.”

Again she was met by a groan, but El bent down to take off her shoes and socks anyways. Max had put pajamas in her duffel bag and she was about to ask her if she wanted to change into them before falling asleep when Max shot up and ran to the bathroom down the hall. El quickly followed her, finding the redhead bent over the toilet and throwing up all the alcohol she had drank that night.

Max’s hair was still up in her high ponytail, but El bent down next to her anyways to rub her back.

“There, there,” El cooed, wrinkling her nose in disgust but still trying to be supportive. “Get it all out.”

Max finally stopped, taking in a long inhale and exhale, before collapsing onto the wall, her face tired and pale. El felt so bad for her that she completely forgave her for taking her away from Mike. She knew, anyways, if Max had known what was going to happen between them she would have been on her best behavior. She’d always been supportive of them.

“I’m going to get you your pajamas and your toothbrush, alright,” El told her. 

Max only nodded before El stood up and went back to her room to retrieve the things and going back to the bathroom. El helped her get out of her tank top and jeans and into her oversized t-shirt and cotton shorts, forcing her to stand up long enough so she could brush her teeth and get the probably gross taste out of her mouth. Then she got her hair out of the ponytail and led her back to the bed with her hand in hers while the other held makeup wipes.

She put her into bed, making sure she was warm underneath the covers and a pile of blankets, before she went to her face to wipe off the makeup that still lingered on her face. 

“Ellie,” Max mumbled, grabbing onto her wrist while she was finishing taking off her mascara.

“Yeah,” El asked.

“I’m sorry that you had to leave the party because of me.”

“It’s okay,” she smiled sincerely. She finished taking off the mascara before bending down to press a quick kiss to her forehead. By then Max’s eyes had drifted closed and her breathing had evened out and El decided that she should get ready for bed, too.

She took a hot shower, changed into her favorite flannel pajamas, and went to put some aspirin and a glass of water on the bedside table next to Max before climbing into the bed next to the redhead herself. 

El stared up at the ceiling for a while, focused on the sound of the rain still falling outside and the quiet snores of her best friend sleeping next to her. 

She still couldn’t believe that she had kissed Mike Wheeler.

Technically, he had kissed her first. But then she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and it was still the most unbelievable thing that had ever happened to her. Because he had been the first boy she had ever like romantically, and then he had been the first boy she had ever hated. Now he was also the first boy she had ever kissed and it was  _amazing_. 

He was amazing. Funny and sweet and charming and intelligent and handsome and loyal, and with every little attribute she thought of, her heart started racing faster and her smile grew wider.

She was so happy that Max was asleep and couldn’t see her because she was pretty sure she was blushing beyond belief just at the thought of Mike. She felt giddy and excited, and suddenly she didn’t even want to sleep. She just wanted to dance and laugh and twirl and do anything to possibly express the happiness she was feeling.

Mike Wheeler liked her. He’d told her. He’d showed her.

_You’re the only girl I want to kiss_ , kept replaying in her head, and she just couldn’t believe he, any boy really, had said those words to her. She had never felt so wanted, and seen, and invincible. 

That night, she dreamt about flying and conquering monsters. She was the most powerful girl in the universe and when all was said and done, Mike was waiting for her at school with flowers and took her in his arms, and kissed her  _exactly_  as she deserved. (She had saved the world after all.) 

She was dreaming about his soft mouth slanted against her and firm hands on her waist and sweet sounds she’d never heard out of him before when she suddenly heard another voice.

_“El...El...EL!”_

El opened her eyes, immediately seeing Max’s blue eyes wide with interest and disgust as she hovered above her. She drew back in surprise and Max let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank  _God_ ,” she exclaimed, getting away from her and plopping back on the pillow she slept on through the night. “You were making the weirdest fucking noises, and I was starting to feel queasier.”

“I was,” El asked, trying not to groan from part embarrassment and part anger of being interrupted from  _such_  a good dream.

“Yeah,” Max said throwing a hand over her eyes to block out the sun that was shining from El’s window. “Were you having a sex dream or something?”

“Eww, no,” El replied quickly. It definitely hadn’t been that, but it’d still been enough to make her feel warm and tingly and fill with a need to have Mike be with her again right away. She took a sip of water before turning her attention back to Max. “So how are you feeling?”

“Like a bulldozer being driven by Satan just demolished me,” she answered. She took her hand away from her eyes to look at El, an apologetic look on her face. “I’m sorry about last night, by the way. I know you probably didn’t want to spend your time watching me puke.”

“It’s fine,” El shook her head. “How much do you remember?”

“I remember Lucas screaming at you about where you had been and then me screaming at him for screaming at you. But then I started yelling at you for wearing a leather jacket...” she trailed off before a wide smile showed on her face. “Were you wearing Mike’s jacket?!”

“I was,” El answered as casually as possible. “I couldn’t find mine and he let me borrow his.”

It was then that El had remembered that she’d put her phone number in his pocket. She had been busy trying to talk Max down, realizing that she was going to leave soon, and had quickly grabbed the first piece of paper she saw. It had been a stained napkin someone had left behind and after opening a couple of drawers, she had found a pen and scribbled her phone number for Mike. And a little heart. He deserved it.

It had been so quick, quickly shoving it into the jacket’s pocket and telling Lucas she had to give Mike his jacket back before they left, that she’d forgotten about it until then. Now she was overwhelmed by imagining Mike’s reaction when had found it after she’d left. 

“Oh my god,” Max squealed, wincing in pain a little, and bringing El back to the present. “His crush on you is so obvious!”

“Yeah,” El smiled, thinking back to their secret shared whispers and kisses and smiles from the previous night. “It’s kind of silly, actually but yeah. He likes me.”

“I am so proud of you,” Max smiled, taking her hand so they were joined together in between them.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not denying his feelings for you anymore! You’re awesome and he knows that, and you know he knows that.”

Max’s smile was so wide and genuine, her eyes bright despite feeling terrible, and El felt like she could cry at any moment. She had the best friend she could have ever asked for in Max. She was always there to make her feel better about herself and make her laugh, and from the very beginning she had proved that she was always going to be there for her. Mike Wheeler made her feel seen, but Max Mayfield made her feel cared for like nobody else. 

She knew she trusted Max with her secrets, even despite the fact that she’d told Mike about the foster homes. And she really wanted to tell her about everything that had happened with Mike the past couple of days. She knew that the worst that would happen would be slight teasing, but still. El couldn’t help the feeling that her relationship with Mike, whatever it was, would somehow be tainted if it was something that wasn’t between them. It was the only thing in the world that was really  _hers_. 

“So did something happen between you and Mike at the party” Max asked her, a curious look on her face. 

“Umm-.”

But they were interrupted by the sound of knocking on her closed bedroom door, followed by the sound of Jim’s voice asking if they were awake.

“Yeah, Dad,” El answered, breathing out a sigh of relief for the interruption. “We just woke up.”

“Well then come out,” he spoke again from the hallway. “I made pancakes.”

“Pancakes,” Max yelled excitedly, sitting up quickly before grabbing onto her temples from moving to fast. El laughed at her, receiving a swift punch in the arm from the redhead, before the two of them left the room to go to the kitchen. Jim was in there, putting plates with stacks of pancakes onto the table for the three of them, when he looked up to see Max dragging her feet to the table.

“You look like Hell, Red,” he snickered, taking in her messy hair and dark under eye circles and pale complexion. 

“Feel like Hell, Chief,” she saluted mockingly, and dropped herself onto the chair next to El. 

“And how are you feeling,” Jim asked El.

“Fine,” she said.  _Perfect_ , she thought.

She waited until he finished pouring himself a cup of coffee before she reached for the pot, too. Max tried to grab it right after, but Jim slapped her hand away.

“Coffee’ll make your hangover worse,” he scolded, getting up to go to the fridge and grab her orange juice. “Drink this.”

“You know, you’re being totally chill about this,” Max grinned. “I’d expect to be in handcuffs right now or something, considering you’re the chief and I participated in underage drinking.”

“I did a lot worse when I was your age,” Jim said, cutting into his pancakes. “And I’m not your parent, so it’s not my place to judge. As long as you don’t get my kid into trouble, we’ll have no problem between us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Max smirked, throwing a wink at El and receiving a swift kick to her shin from her under the table. El didn’t know what she was suggesting, but she’d prefer it if she didn’t suggest it in front of her dad.

The three of them finished up their breakfast and cleaned up afterwards, Jim saying how he was going to get ready to go into town for a few errands. He’d been going on a lot of “errands” lately, El had noticed, but she didn’t mention it with Max still there. She’d asked if she could spend the rest of the day, and El had happily said yes. She needed a bit of a distraction from thinking about Mike. 

But when Max went into the shower, saying how she wanted to wash off how gross she felt, El found herself perched on the side of her bed and staring at her phone sitting on her nightstand. She just wanted the thing to ring already. She didn’t even know if Mike was going to call that day, if he was going to call at all, but she wanted to be there in case he did. 

Which was ridiculous, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She wondered if he would call and they’d spend the entire time flirting with each other. Or if he would call and ask her out on a real date. Maybe they’d simply spend the entire day on the phone, Mike recounting more funny stories and telling her dorky jokes, and honestly the idea of spending an entire day listening to the sound of Mike’s voice was like a dream to her.

Just as Max had done earlier that morning, however, she swiftly came in and unintentionally put a stop to it.

“Are you waiting for someone to call you,” Max asked her as she came in the room, a towel wrapped around her head and her hands holding the clothes she’d taken off last night. She went to put it in her duffel bag before bending down to grab the rest of her scattered clothes and dumping it into the trash bag she’d also brought along.

“No,” El coughed, throwing one last glance towards the phone before getting off the bed to help Max clean all of her things up.

Luckily, Max didn’t mention it again to her. Instead, they spent the rest of the afternoon watching cartoons in the living room and eating popcorn and chips and whatever other unhealthy crap Jim had bought despite El’s pleading to eat healthier. Not that she really minded at that moment. 

When they were getting a little tired of the cartoons and Max was flipping through the channels with the remote, the phone in El’s bedroom began to ring. At the sound of it, she felt her heart flip. Maybe it was him.

“I’ll go get it”, she told Max, practically jumping off the couch to run to her room and pick up the phone. The little pink device was still ringing and she took a deep breath, a smile on her face as she picked up the phone and put it up to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, El. Is Max still there,” the voice asked, and it most definitely was  _not_  who she was hoping it would be.

“Oh…Lucas,” El said, trying not to sound disappointed but apparently failing.

“Yeah. Lucas,” he deadpanned. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No!”

“Oh really,” he asked and his voice sounded brighter. “You weren’t expecting a call from a certain Mi-.”

“Do you want to talk to Max or not,” she interrupted, her face warming up. She hated that she was so obvious sometimes. Even when she wasn’t face to face.

“Yeah, if she’s there.”

“Max,” El yelled to her, momentarily holding the phone away from her. “Your annoying boyfriend is on the phone!”

She heard Max’s hurried footsteps before she showed up in her room, asking her, “Were you expecting it to be  _your_  annoying boyfriend?”

El stuck out her tongue before flipping her off, passing the phone to a giggling Max and walking out of the bedroom and closing the door behind her to give them privacy. They probably had things to talk about since the previous night had ended in Max yelling at Lucas and Lucas being angry at Max for being drunk.

The moment of privacy turned into an hour, and then another, and El found herself drifting off to sleep on the couch, only being woken up hours later by Jim, who had brought pizza home along with some bags from Melvald’s. She got up from the couch to go to her room and get Max, but saw that she had fallen asleep, too but with the phone off of the hook and  _oh my god, what if Mike had tried calling and the line had been busy all day._

El woke her up, trying not to sound annoyed at the sight of her dozed off from talking to Lucas. She wasn’t really annoyed at that, knowing from experience that Max had a tendency to fall asleep during telephone conversations. She was just mostly worried that she’d missed her chance to talk with Mike.

The worry didn’t subside for the rest of the weekend, even after Max had gone home Saturday night. She’d spent all of Sunday in her room working on homework and reading teen magazines (taking a quiz to see if her crush liked her to which the answer according to the magazine had been a ‘100%, Totally!’). Every other minute she seemed to glance at her phone from her spot at her desk or on her bed, as if staring at it would somehow conjure up a call from Mike. 

But by the time the moon was up, El had convinced herself that he wasn’t going to call. She tried to reassure herself that maybe he hadn’t found the napkin or it’d fallen out somewhere. Perhaps, he was nervous in that super cute way she liked and he had been too scared to call her. Hell, maybe he had called her the day before and she hadn’t been able to answer because of Max.

If that was the case, though, why hadn’t he tried again? An unsettling feeling took over El as she thought about Mike changing her mind about her. Maybe he’d woken up and realized what a mistake it had been to kiss her. Or he’d realized that he just hadn’t liked her the way he thought he did. 

She knew she had his phone number from the time they did their project, and she had half the mind to call him and ask why he hadn’t called her, but when she turned to look at the time and saw it was nearing 11 P.M., she realized that his parents and Holly probably wouldn’t appreciate the late night call. 

Instead, she spent the whole night tossing and turning and only getting a few hours of sleep, all nerves since she didn’t know how Mike would react upon seeing her for the first time since Friday. She was scared that he would ignore her. Maybe even a little scared that he wouldn’t and then what.

And when she finally did see him, his eyes locked on hers from across the classroom, she realized that there was no way Mike could have changed her mind about her. Not when he looked at her like  _that_ , and made her feel like  _this_. Like she was the sun, but she was the one melting from his gaze.

She spent the entirety of the class switching off from staring at him to doodling in the margins of her notes, hearts with arrows going through them and dots turned into constellations and “M.W. + E.H.” She also flipped to a blank page of her notebook to write a note to him, to meet her in the auditorium during lunch so they could talk. Or whatever else they wanted to happen.

El knew she wasn’t allowed in there without another teacher or staff member, but figured no one else would know if she was in there. If someone came in she could always say that she was rehearsing her lines and blocking. And that was enough reasoning for her.

Good reasoning, too since she was able to spend a few blissful moments with Mike’s hands against her and his lips moving in rhythm with hers and the sounds of their breathing. And despite their interruption, she’d still managed to give him her phone number and address, a piece of information he had put to good use.

That Monday night, the phone rang as soon as she had crawled into bed after her nighttime routine, showering, changing into pajamas, brushing her teeth, etc., when her phone rang. She’d figured it was going to be Max calling about something, late night calls between the two girls something of usual occurrence, leading to Jim barging into her room and hanging the phone up for her when it was “Three in the fucking morning on a school night and he has to make sure he stays awake during work, she had had to go to bed!”

But when El answered the phone, she realized it wasn’t her best friend.

“Hello, you’ve reached the house of the most bitchin’ girl in Hawkins. She’s speaking,” she spoke into the phone, settling herself against her pillows as she casually said what she usually did when Max called.

“Is that how you usually answer the phone?”

“Mike,” she asked him, her voice shocked as she took in his.  _Mike had called her!_

“I mean,” he said through the phone, his voice giggling and El felt like she could have fallen if she wasn’t already in bed. “You did give me your phone number so I could call you, right?”

“Yeah, but I just didn’t think it was going to be you,” she said, her cheeks warming up from the embarrassment. She looked at her alarm clock on the side of the bed, the hands on the clock dictating that it was well past 9 P.M. “Max is usually the only one who calls this late.”

“Disappointed,” he asked teasingly.

“Slightly,” she teased back.

“You always know just how to hurt a guy, Hopper.”

“Thanks. It’s part of the specialities being the most bitchin’ girl in Hawkins, but you of course already knew that,” she smiled widely.

“Yeah. I did,” he sighed, and she swore she could almost hear his smile through the telephone. They were quiet for a moment, nice and comfortable, before El finally coughed and spoke up again.

“So, what are you calling for?”

“I umm...” he struggled, and she raised an eyebrow, imagining him fumbling for the words he wanted to say. “I wanted to know what the assignment was for English. I didn’t write it down.”

“Oh,” she said simply. So that’s why he had called her. “We were supposed to read some poems in the textbook and answer some questions in the back. Hold on, I’m in bed. Let me go get the specific-.”

“No!”

She stopped the movement of swinging her legs over the bed to go over to her desk and grab her planner. 

“What?”

“I mean,” he sighed. “If you’re already in bed, don’t get up for that.”

“You said you needed the assignment,” she rationalized. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. Mike was quiet before he spoke up again in a quiet voice.

“I lied.”

“What?”

“I already did the assignment,” he said, and then almost in a whisper added, “I just needed an excuse to call you.”

El felt her heart growing and glowing at hearing that. Mike Wheeler really was the dorkiest person she knew. (But that fact that he was able to melt her into a puddle really spoke volumes about how much of a dork she probably was, too.)

“You’re such a loser, Wheeler,” she laughed. Not mockingly in the slightest, just out of the happiness that needed to burst out of her somehow.  

“I’m just going to hang up if you keep on insulting me,” he told her, but she could tell he was joking.

“No,” she giggled. “I like the sound of your voice.”

“So who’s the loser now?”

“Still very much you.”

They ended up spending the rest of the night talking on the phone, up until it was nearing the beginning of the next day. Mike told her stories about the party in middle school and she told him all of her favorite storylines from soap operas. They complained about teachers and classmates, Mike and El both doing impressions that sent them into hysterics. As the call went on, El found herself relaxing more and more, her smile the only thing that failed to subside.

It was a smile that stayed on her face from night until the next morning, a smile that made her dad look at her questioningly, and a smile that didn’t fade from her face until she walked into the bathroom before class started and saw Chrissy Carter standing in front of the mirror, her green and white cheerleader uniform in pristine condition as she applied red lipstick.

El tried to slip by her and go into one of the empty stalls unnoticed, but Chrissy caught her eye in the reflection of the mirror.

“El,” she said excitedly, her face bursting into a smile and  _damn, she was really pretty. Mike really didn’t want to make out with her?_

“Hi, Chrissy,” El greeted, pulling at the hem of her sweater as she forced a smile on her face. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Chrissy. She was popular, sure, but she wasn’t mean. She just had never really interacted with her before.

“How are you,” Chrissy asked her, taking a few steps forward to hug her quickly.

“I’m doing pretty good, actually,” El smiled. “You?”

“Same,” Chrissy giggled, bouncing on the soles of her shoes. “Just getting ready for homecoming coming up in a few weeks.”

“Cool,” El grinned. They stayed quiet for a few seconds, and El was making her way back to the stall, but Chrissy spoke up again, a hint of curiosity in her voice.

“So how are things with, Wheeler?”

El stopped and turned around to look at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Mike Wheeler,” Chrissy furrowed her eyebrows. “Tall? Kind of dorky?”

“I know who he is,” El rolled her eyes. That was the understatement of the century. “But what are you asking exactly?”

“Well...” Chrissy started, but ended up biting her lip instead. “Oh, I don’t know if I should tell you or not. I don’t know if it was a secret exactly.”

“Just tell me.”

A million thoughts started swirling in El’s head.  _What if Mike had lied to her about not kissing her? Or it was all part of some trick? Or-._

“It was just that when we were in the closet together at the party, he couldn’t stop talking about you,” Chrissy smiled softly.

“Really,” El asked, her heart racing. Mike had talked about her to Chrissy and she felt like she could cry if she wasn’t at school and in front of one of the most popular girls she’d ever known.

“Yeah,” Chrissy giggled. “He kept talking about how nice and smart and talented you were. And he said you were gorgeous. It was actually really, really sweet. So I was just wondering if he told you anything like that since he said he was going to.”

“Yeah,” El breathed, her smile a little dazed. “He did tell me something like that.”

“Good,” she grinned, before moving back to the sink to grab her makeup bag “Well I better get going, so I won’t be late to class. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you around,” El told her, waving goodbye at the girl as she left the bathroom. El checked to make sure no one else was in the bathroom before allowing herself to jump a little and let out a high-pitched squeal from pure giddiness and excitement. 

Mike Wheeler was the cutest and he was all hers. 

When she saw him later for class, dressed in a t-shirt and navy blue hoodie that made his eyes look even darker and more alluring than usual, she had to restrain herself from throwing herself onto him. It just seemed that recently she found her feelings for him growing stronger and stronger with every little thing he did. 

Like waiting for her after class was over so they could walk to class together. 

He had his books in hands, stepped off to the side of the doorframe, and his smile grew wider when she walked up to him, letting him open the door for her so she could step out into the hallway first.

“Hi,” she smiled, tucking a stray curl away from her face and walking in step with him as they made their way to the cafeteria.

“Hi,” he smiled back. “Do you want me to hold your books for you?”

“You don’t think I’m strong enough to carry themselves,” she asked him, raising an eyebrow and holding her textbooks closer to her chest.

“No, it’s just that it’s the nice thing to do.”

“Oh, so you’re being nice, now?”

“Ha ha,” he deadpanned, but he looked down at her and his face blushed and she felt like pulling him away to smother his face with kisses, one for every time he was cute. (Which would take a while, she realized.)

He opened the door to the cafeteria and they made their way to their usual lunch table, except instead of taking her spot on the other side and end of the table away from him, she sat directly in front of him. He quirked an eyebrow up but she only smiled at him innocently and they accepted that it was one of the things that was bound to change considering their new dynamic. 

Mike was getting his lunch out of his paper bag, El staring at him as he did so with her chin in the palm of her hand, and she couldn’t resist.

“I heard you like me,” she whispered, a statement that made him almost drop his sandwich and made her giggle.

“Obviously, El. We’ve kissed like twice already...wait,” he said, putting down his food and as his expression changed from casual to confused. He leaned in closer to her. “Who told you I liked you?”

“Chrissy Carter.”

His jaw dropped. “She didn’t.”

“Oh, but she did, Michael,” El tsk-ed teasingly. “She told me that you went on and on about how kind and intelligent and talented I was. And about how  _gorgeous_  I am.”

“Are you done?”

“That’s probably what Chrissy was thinking when you kept rambling on about me.”

“I’m leaving,” he groaned, going to stand up from the table.

“Aww, c’mon,” El laughed, grabbing him by wrist to stop him and make him sit back down. “It’s cute!” And then more quietly. “You’re cute.”

“Yeah,” he asked her, reaching out so that his fingertips were barely grazing hers. She saw stars. 

“Yeah.”

She was about to intertwine their hands, completely forgetting where they were, when Dustin and Will came in sight and she quickly pulled away. Mike looked confused, maybe even hurt, she didn’t miss that, but his face changed to understanding when Dustin and Will came closer.

“Are we changing seating again,” Dustin asked, letting his tray drop on the table as he sat down next to El, Will next to Dustin.

“We were just talking about that English paper I told you guys about,” Mike lied, and El looked at him confusingly before she understood that it was probably the excuse he’d given them the day before.

El nodded in agreement then and the rest of the lunch period went by with the party talking about their plans for Halloween that weekend. Max and El decided that they were going to stay in and watch movies at Max’s house, the girl claiming she had all of the best horror films on tape. Mike and Lucas both groaned about having to babysit their younger sisters, Mike in charge of taking Holly trick-or-treating and Lucas having to drive Erica and some friends to a haunted house a town over. Dustin was going to give out candy with his mom and Will was going to a horror movie marathon with his brother, Jonathan.

Mike and El didn’t get to really talk during lunch or after, leaving El feeling a little disappointed. Their conversation didn’t continue until after school.

El had gotten out of rehearsal earlier than planned, the director claiming a family emergency, and El had walked to the payphone to call her dad and inform him it’d be fine if he picked her up. But when she was walking down the hallway, past the AV room, she remembered it was Tuesday. AV club meeting.

She stopped and walked back to the room, not even knowing if the meeting was still going on, if Mike would even be in there. She hesitated for a moment, before quietly reaching for the doorknob and turning it slightly so she could open it. And sure enough, Mike was the only one in there, gathering his things at the table and raising his head to look at the door.

“El,” he smiled, even though it was obvious he was a little confused. “What are you doing here?”

“Rehearsal ended a little early today,” she shrugged, slipping in and closing the door behind her. She’d never been in the AV room and honestly, she was expecting something a little bigger, a little more otherworldly like she saw in sci-fi movies. Instead it was a cramped space with a computer in one corner and some other devices she couldn’t name scattered on tables and shelves. “Where’s the rest of the club?”

“You just missed them. I was just staying behind to make sure everything was locked up and in place.”

“You just missed them. I was just staying behind to make sure everything was locked up and in place.”

He moved from behind the desk, a shy smile on his face and she went to get near him too, dropping her backpack so that it fell on the floor. His hand was outstretched and she grabbed onto it, letting him draw her closer and wrap his arms around her. It’d only been since yesterday but she realized how much she missed it.

She grabbed onto the drawstring of his zip-up hoodie, twirling it around her finger and pulling him down slowly, their eyes closing as their foreheads met. It was nice, being with him like this. More than nice, really, but she didn’t have the words to articulate her feelings at the moment, with the sound of his breathing and the feel of his hands on hers. 

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, soft and barely a flutter of feeling, and she opened her eyes to see him looking at her like she could break at any moment. And she wasn’t fragile, but she liked that after months of arguing Mike was treating her with care, even if only by secret glances shared between the two of them in secret moments like this.

She moved her glance towards the table where he’d been at and noticed a large blue device sitting on it, her curiosity quickly moving from Mike to that. 

“What’s this,” she asked, taking his arms away from her gently and moving towards the table. 

“Oh,” he breathed, walking towards and turning some buttons so that it’d turn on. “It’s a Heathkit ham shack. It’s like a radio but you can also transmit messages from here to really far places, like Australia.”

El used her arms to prop herself and sit down on the table’s surface, her legs swinging off the edge. She grabbed the mic and pressed the button on the stand, getting some feedback, and she giggled.

“Hello,” she said, in a bad Australian accent that sounded more British than anything, and it made Mike laugh. “Do you guys mind sending over a few dozen packages of Tim Tams to Indiana?”

She looked up with an amused smile on her face, Mike still staring at her and she felt something inside of her that almost burned.

“What,” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. You’re just really pretty.”

The feeling grew and her smile turned into a smirk, her hands putting the mic back down as she went to sit up.

“Are you just going to stand there and tell me I look pretty or are you going to do something about it?”

He raised an eyebrow and stepped closer to her until he was standing in between her legs. He put his hands on top of her jean-covered knees and leaned down so that his lips were only a breath away from hers.

“Did you have something in mind,” he asked her, his voice low and breathy, and El couldn’t stop herself any longer.

She closed the distance between them, crashing her lips onto his and causing him to moan in a way that made her feel warmer than before. She moved her hands up to tangle themselves in his hair, soft and particularly curly that day and just so  _him_. He moved his hands from her knees to her waist pressing her closer to him and making her let out an involuntary gasp that she was too preoccupied with to be embarrassed about.

Their lips moved against each other, every second passing by making their kisses grow more passionate and heated and El needed more of him. She moved her hands from his hair to the front of his shirt, curling the material underneath her fists and pulling him. He went to move his hands from her waist up to her head, his palms cupping the sides of her face. 

Mike withdrew his lips from hers, making her gasp in protest but she stopped soon enough when she realized he was pressing kissing down her jaw, to the exposed area of her neck. Her head practically went limp in his hands, her head moving back to give him more room to press kisses with his soft lips, and  _oh_   _god, that felt good._  She lost herself in the feeling, only her grasp on his t-shirt getting stronger in an attempt that he would never, _ever_  stop. 

El saw stars, fireworks, every cliche she could have possibly envisioned and felt with his warm breath against her skin and then he stopped in a particular spot and left a lingering kiss and  _yes-._

“You’re wrinkling the Millennium Falcon,” he said against her neck, his voice almost teasing and it stopped her completely. 

“The  _what?!_ ”

She sat up to look at him, her grasp loosening and her eyes wide and confused. 

“My T-shirt,” he said slowly, looking down at its now wrinkled image of some spaceship.

“Oh,” she breathed out in relief.  _That’s_ what it was.

“What did you think it was,” he asked her, his voice mischievous and now it really was teasing, evident by the glimmer in his eyes and wide smile.

“Nothing,” El blushed, feeling embarrassed. “Oh my god, shut up and kiss me.”

She brought her hand up to his neck to pull him down for another kiss, only enjoying his lips against for a few seconds before he pulled away.

“Wait-,” he said, a worried expression on her face. She groaned, throwing her head onto his shoulder before he grabbed her by hers and looked at her very seriously. “Have you never seen Star Wars before?!”

“No,” she shrugged. “Should I have?”

“El, I don’t think we can continue this until you see them,” he told her with an expression of grave concern and El couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

“That important, huh,” she asked him with a raised eyebrow, grabbing onto his hands and moving them so they rested on her hips.

“The fate of our entire relationship rests on this,” he told her, half-jokingly but half-serious. (She could tell).

_And wait, had he said “relationship?”_

She stayed quiet for a moment, pretending to be contemplating what he had said. He dropped a kiss on her cheek. Then her other cheek. Forehead. Nose. Temples. Each one peppered with a cute little “please” and finally she was giggling and moved her head up so that his lips ended up on hers.

“Fine,” she relented, smiling at how cute and pleased Mike looked. “When are we watching them?”

“We?”

“I am not watching those dorky movies, for you by the way, all by myself,” she exclaimed. “And I know you have them all, so when are we watching them?”

He thought about it before suggesting. “Sunday? Because Saturday is Halloween and that way we can finish homework. And you don’t have rehearsal that day. And we can spend all day in my basement so you can experience the best film trilogy of all time.”

He looked so happy and excited that El felt herself getting excited about the prospect of spending a whole day at Mike’s house watching the geeky movies he loved.

“Okay,” she agreed. “It’s a date.”

“Yeah,” he smiled. “It’s a date.”

She moved his hand up to her mouth to press a kiss to it when she noticed the digital numbers on his watch and her eyes widened. 

“Shit,” she said, pushing Mike away from her so that she could hop off of the table. “My dad is probably here already.”

“So I’ll see you on Sunday, then?”

“We still have school the rest of this week, Wheeler,” she rolled her eyes, bending down to grab her backpack and put it back on.

“I know,” he said, leaning back on the table. “But I’ll see you…alone.”

“Yup,” she giggled, going back to him so she could kiss him just one last time. “Just you and me and a couple of aliens or astronauts or whatever  _Star Wars_  is about.”

“You’re killing me, Hopper,” he groaned and she threw her head back laughing at him. 

“Now you know how it feels to have to watch…” she tried to remember his words. “Three movies, you said?”

“You’re going to love them!”

“I better,” she threatened, even though the threat was punctuated by a smile and brief kiss to his lips. “Bye.”

She walked away from him and back towards the door, opening it and hearing him yell towards her “May the force be with you” right before it closed. She closed her eyes, and bit down on a smile as she made her way to the outside of the school.

_Oh my god, she’s totally head over in heels for the nerdiest boy in the galaxy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did NOT expect to be gone for a whole month (what in the unholy hell) so i apologize for the seriously unplanned hiatus, but as i said in my last note school has been crazy and it just would not stop so thanks for all of the understanding and support
> 
> i hope you guys liked this chapter and i am so happy you like the previous one and i just want to let you all know i think about each and every one of you every single day!! u guys are the best ever :)
> 
> i've posted writing on my tumblr since the last chapter which you can find here: https://janeswheeler.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing (i'm also going to be posting some stuff there this weekend, so if ur interested in reading any of it...) 
> 
> i'll see you guys next chapter!! (hopefully it won't take four weeks until then)
> 
> love always, julia


	8. you're not cute enough to be han solo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and El watch Star Wars together. (Or known by its alternative title: "the puns are strong with this one")

El’s voice was quickly becoming Mike’s favorite sound. 

They had been talking on the phone every night since Monday, Mike moving in Nancy’s pastel blue phone from her bedroom into his so he didn’t have to use the one downstairs. He’d settle himself under his covers, his fingers pressing the seven numbers of El’s telephone number with practiced ease, and lay back until he heard her giggly voice whisper a “Hello.”

Every time he called her, he didn’t know if she would answer. He wanted her to, obviously, but he kept waiting for the night she decided she didn’t want to talk to him anymore. It was nervousness he couldn’t help but feel. She was beautiful and charming, and the idea of her being interested in him still hadn’t fully settled in.

Which was why when the dial tone would end and he would hear her sweet voice answer, his heart race would change into one charged by anxiousness into one charged by happiness. She was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a miracle, and the constant reminder at night that he hadn’t been imagining the stolen glances between them and the grazes of fingertips as they walked next to each other at school, was all that he needed to ground him to reality. This was real. She was real.

On Tuesday they had talked about their impromptu makeout session in the A.V. room, all quiet murmurs and husky tones and feigned calmness from Mike as he closed his eyes and remembered how she had felt pressed against him.

“I think you left me a hickey,” El said, and he imagined her running her fingertips down her neck where his lips had traced kisses earlier. He thought about the breathy sighs he’d been able to extract from her, how they had sounded desperate and made him feel warm. Even then just thinking about it made him feel hot all over.

“If you’re not sure then I didn’t give you a very good one,” he tried to tease, as if he didn’t feel like he was on fire.

“You can try again on Sunday,” she teased back.

Mike almost choked.

On Wednesday they argued over the validity of romance novels as literature. Mike tried to tell her that smut disguised as those flimsy little paperbacks they sold in pharmacies couldn’t be considered literature, to which El said they could because it was creative writing that held plot and characters and had gone through a publisher. Mike wouldn’t relent though, secretly loving the way she seemed so riled up about it all. El threatened to hang up on him and she did, to which Mike called her back.

“Michael Wheeler, I’m mad at you. Don’t call me back,” she hissed.

“No. You should know by now I’m not giving up on you, El,” he whispered.

“Mike,” she said softly.

“I’m also not giving up on the fact that romance novels are trash.”

_“Mike!”_

On Thursday they argued again, this time about the romantic poetry they were going over in their English class, the words of Shakespeare and Neruda and Dickinson. All Mike had really said was that they should have gone over Edgar Allan Poe or Shirley Jackson since it was nearing Halloween, but in the process had said “stupid love poems.”

“I think your issue is that you’re not romantic,” El told him.

“I’m romantic,” he defended himself.

“No you’re not,” El laughed, making his face blush from half embarrassment, half anger. “You bullied me for liking romance novels and now you just called love poems stupid.”

“They are!”

“Bet  _you_  couldn’t write one.”

And of course, that led to Mike wanting to prove El wrong.  _(Old habits die hard.)_

After hanging up with El, after steering the conversation away and telling her that she would love Star Wars if she liked romance which led to a calmer conversation between the two about their movie date plans on Sunday, Mike went back to his desk, turned on the lamp and tried to write a poem. 

They all ended up sounding bad. Extremely and unbearably cheesy and cringe worthy. He started with “Roses are red” and stopped himself, tearing the page away from his notebook and crumpling it before tossing it to the ground. Then he started again with “You are” but his mind went blank and he had to once again throw away the paper when his mind finally came to “hot” and he knew El would murder him if he wrote it.

It was like that, hours and hours of useless attempts at writing El a love poem, to prove her wrong and show her that he could be romantic. And maybe a part of him did feel bad, thinking that El deserved romance and he wasn’t giving it to her. With a sigh, he went to rest his head on his forearms on the desk and with a turn of his head to the carpet covered with crumpled notebook pages, he remembered the day he woke up on the ground to find her next to him and he finally realized what he wanted to say to El.

He wrote it down quickly as the words flowed out of him and then copied it again on to another paper, making sure his writing was as neat as possible. The next day, he slipped the poem into her locker before their English class. When they walked out of it together to walk to the cafeteria, he managed to pull her aside for a bit in the hallway, his fingers warm on the pulse point of her wrist and his mouth grazing her ear as he leaned down to tell her to check her locker before leaving school. She looked up at him with wide eyes and flushed cheeks and he couldn’t help but wink at her as he let her go so they could continue walking.

And so on Friday when they talked on the phone, El was gushing and giggling about how much she loved the poem. It made Mike happy beyond belief to know that he had done something to make her so happy. He wished he could have seen the look on her face when she’d read it, or even then just hearing her talking about it, and he rationalized that he really just wanted to look at her all the time. (And then realized that he really needed to get a picture of El, so that he could have something in moments like these when he was overwhelmed and  _needed_  to see her and was too terrified of her police chief dad to try and go see her.)

“Mike, can you read it to me,” she asked him sweetly.

“El,” he blushed, even more so when she started giggling.

“Please! It’s so pretty! And I want to hear it from you, in your voice.”

He felt himself giving up just by imagining her with her big eyes and a halfway smile, and murmured a “hold on” before getting out of bed to get the first draft of the poem that he’d stuffed in his desk drawer. When he went back and held the phone back to his ear, he heard El giggling again and couldn’t help but smile and feel a little embarrassed. Nonetheless, he read it and felt himself growing less anxious and more excited by the end of it. His heart couldn’t let him be nervous for too long when El’s happiness was (literally) on the line.

_I saw her and thought I_

_was still dreaming, somehow._

_I had never seen someone_

_bend sunshine to their will like her._

_I had never seen anything so deserving_

_of the word ethereal._

_I had never imagined feeling everything_

_when I looked at someone._

_I am still waiting to wake up._

It was quiet for only three seconds after he was done reading it before El’s voice came through the phone, low and breathy and sending chills throughout every centimeter of his body.

“Mike Wheeler, I am going to kiss you like crazy on Sunday.”

“I told you I could be romantic,” he smirked.

“I know,” she laughed. “You finally proved me wrong! It took you long enough.”

_“Hey!”_

Which brought Mike to Saturday: Halloween. He had always considered it to be the best night of the year (free candy, being with his friends, a day he finally didn’t have to be himself) but he found himself wanting it to be over so that it could be Sunday and he could spend the entire day with El. Halloween had nothing on El Hopper.

She’s all he could think about, even with the noise of the television downstairs blaring  _It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown_  and his dad snoring on the La-Z-Boy and his mom and Holly arguing with each other as she tried to get the little girl into her costume. El Hopper made the entire world fade into white noise. 

He looked over at his alarm clock from his spot on his bed, the numbers displaying the time as a quarter past five and Mike thought about what El was doing. She had told him the night before that she was going to finish all of her homework before heading over to Max’s at around six or seven so they could have their scary movie marathon/sleepover. He thought about her pouring over textbooks with the cute look she got on her face whenever she focused, scrunched up eyebrows and lower lip caught under teeth. (He thought about her lower lip caught under  _his_  teeth.) 

God, did he want to see her already. October could not end soon enough.

He looked over to his alarm clock again, seeing that only one minute had passed, and decided that although he had to wait to see her, he didn’t want to go a day without at least talking to her. Hearing her voice had become part of his routine and he didn’t want to go a day without it. So before he could stop himself, he picked up the phone, dialed her number and waited until she answered.

“Hello,” she said, her voice questioning and Mike felt his mood brightening at the single word.

“Hey _boo_ tiful,” he smiled.

“Eww.” She fake gagged through the phone repeatedly, making him laugh. “That was corny!”

“Don’t you mean  _candy_ corny,” he spoke up, once again eliciting fake vomit noises from her that made him crazy with laughter.

“You. You are the scariest part about Halloween,” she tried to deadpan, but failed at the end when a giggle escaped. 

“Well, then you’ll have nothing to be scared of when you and Max watch your slasher movies all night.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Let’s hope not. I won’t be there to hold your hand, you know, in case you get scared,” he teased.

“Yeah, you not being there is my treat.”

“Oh so it’s okay when you make Halloween puns?”

“It’s one of the many double standards of our relationship,” she giggled, but he was caught up on the word she’d used. 

Relationship.

And logically he knew the definition of the word related to any way two or more things were connected, knew that him and El were technically connected, but he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d meant _relationship_ relationship. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Two people who were involved romantically.  _Officially._

He wanted to know more than anything what exactly their relationship was, what she thought it was.

“Okay,” he managed to say, still thinking about it. About them. Her.

“So umm,” she coughed and it brought him back to the conversation. “Why did you call, by the way?”

He paused for a bit, hoping he wouldn’t sound like a total and complete wastoid when he said, “I just didn’t want to go a day without talking to you.”

“Really,” she asked breathlessly and he thought about how much he liked the shade of pink that always seemed to overtake her cheeks whenever she spoke like that to him.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Talking to you has kinda become the best part of my days.”

“Mine, too.”

“Cool,” he said, as if his heart wasn’t beating crazy against his chest.

“Yeah, really cool.”

They were both quiet for a few moments, a few blissful seconds of un-awkward silence and contentment, until Mike decided to speak up again.

“Are you leaving soon?”

“In a bit. You?”

“Yeah, as soon as my mom manages to get Holly into her costume,” he rolled his eyes as he heard Holly yell something about her hair from the bathroom.

“Oh my god,” El laughed. “I can’t wait to see Holly tomorrow.”

“What about me,” he asked exasperated, pretending to be annoyed.

“Let’s be honest, Wheeler. I’m only doing this to keep up a friendship with your little sister.”

“I always knew deep down that was the truth but it still hurts to hear it.”

She laughed even harder and he joined in with her until he heard the voice of her dad in the background telling her to hurry up.

“My dad is calling me. I gotta go,” she told him.

“Okay,” he said, trying to ignore the disappointed feeling of having to hang up with El. He tried his best to sound as enthusiastic as possible. “Have fun with Max!”

“Thanks! Have fun with Holly,” she said brightly and then sweeter, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait,” he told her honestly. She would never, could never, know just how much Mike couldn’t wait to see her.

“Me either,” she sighed. “Bye, Mike.”

“Bye, El.”

Just as Mike hung up the phone, his mom’s voice called from somewhere in the house and he felt his eyes shut tight at the sound of reality settling in.

“Michael, make sure you’re ready to leave with Holly by six,” Karen yelled.

He turned back to his alarm clock and decided that it would probably be best if he got up before his mom yelled at him again. He forced himself to sit up and slip on his sneakers before he grabbed his hoodie from where he’d thrown it yesterday and left his room. His mom was chasing Holly around the hallways and into her room and he rolled his eyes slightly as he made his way downstairs.

His dad was still asleep on the recliner and he tried to be as quiet as possible as he sat down on the couch next to him and watched what little was left of the Charlie Brown cartoon on TV. By the time it had finished, his mom was coming downstairs with Holly and he smiled as he saw his little sister.

She was dressed up as the pink Care Bear, a fuzzy onesie with an embroidered rainbow covering her belly. Their mom had put her blonde hair into Princess Leia-like buns on the sides of her head and covered the blonde with pink hair spray. And she had even painted a red heart on the tip of her nose and drawn on little pink freckles across her cheeks.

Mike couldn’t help but smile as he thought about how his mom used to bother him about his Halloween costumes when he was younger, always making sure everything was precise and taking pictures of him the entire day. He hadn’t dressed up since the “eighth grade Ghostbusters fiasco,” as him and his friends called it, when they had been the victims of a school wide conspiracy that left them as the only students with costumes. Looking at Holly then, twirling and posing for the camera, he couldn’t help but feel a little sad that he didn’t dress up again for the third year in the row. 

“Do I look cute, Mikey” Holly asked him, her toothy grin wide and he couldn’t help but give her one back.

“Yeah, Holls,” he answered. “You’re probably going to be the cutest Care Bear trick-or-treating tonight.”

She gave a celebratory spin and his mom brought the attention back to her.

“Okay, Michael,” Karen told him. “Remember not to let go of her hand, keep the flashlight on you-.”

“Stay in the neighborhood and be back home before the bigger kids come go out,” he finished for her. He had been the one to take Holly out trick-or-treating for the past three years, since he’d stopped participating himself, and he knew all his mother’s rules by heart.

She smiled at him, running into the kitchen to grab Holly’s orange pumpkin shaped Halloween basket and a flashlight, and came back to hand the latter to him and the former to Holly. She leaned down to kiss Holly’s cheek and then reached up to kiss Mike’s.

“Be safe,” she told them, opening the door for them as Mike grabbed Holly’s hand in his, letting her lead the way down the driveway and to the sidewalk. They turned back to wave goodbye at their mother and then joined the other people who had already begun to walk out of their own homes to trick-or-treat.

Holly continued to lead the way, letting go of Mike’s hand only to run up to doorsteps, knock on the door and put on a sweet smile as she asked for candy. She pointed out other people’s costumes and talked about the Halloween party her class had thrown the day before and Mike listened intently, only responding when she asked him a direct question. Holly had a habit of rambling that he couldn’t be hypocritical about.

And then she asked about El and she managed to get his full attention.

“Did El dress up for Halloween,” Holly asked Mike innocently, but still making Mike trip at the mention of her name.

“I don’t think so,” he answered. “She went over to Max’s for a sleepover so she probably just put on her pajamas.”

“She could be ‘Pajama Girl’ then,” Holly said excitedly.

“Yeah, she could be,” Mike smiled.

She was quiet for a few moments before she let out a sigh and spoke again.

“I miss El.”

He looked down at Holly, a sad pout on her face as she scraped her pink fuzzy slippers on the sidewalk.

“She misses you, too,” he offered, crouching down to look at her.

“No she doesn’t.”

“She does,” he smiled. “I talked to her today and she said she can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

At that Holly’s face lit up, her frown disappearing and turning into a full blown smile.

“Tomorrow,” she asked him excitedly.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “She’s coming over to watch _Star Wars_ with me tomorrow and she said she’s more excited to see you than to hang out with me.”

At that Holly squealed, her hands going up to cover her face and Mike couldn’t help but feel happiness at the fact that Holly liked El so much. If the universe worked in his favor, El would be in his life for a very, very long time and he wanted his family to like her as much as he did. (Or at least halfway as much as he did. He liked her so much that it was honestly overwhelming.)

“Oh my god,” she giggled, a pink blush on her face the shade of her costume. “I can’t believe El is excited to see me! I have so much to tell her!”

“I’m sure she’s excited to hear it,” he told her.

He stood up to try and continue walking, deciding they still had time to go a little way down the street before having to head back home, but Holly tugged on his hand.

“Wait,” she said. “So are you and El boyfriend and girlfriend now?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe.”

She rolled her eyes and continued walking, Mike not missing the attitude change and stopped her.

“Why are you asking, Holls?”

“Because! You said she’s coming over to watch a movie and that’s what people do on dates.”

“Who told you that,” he asked her, quirking an eyebrow at the knowledge of romance his sister always seemed to impart on him.

“Mommy,” she shrugged. “She said she and Daddy used to go on dates and watch movies all the time when they were boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Mike tried not to cringe at the idea of his parents’ days as young adults, going to the movie theater and holding hands and doing God knows what else. His parents never went on dates now. He remembered the last time they’d gone out he had been eight years old and they had hired a babysitter for him and Nancy. He honestly couldn’t even imagine his parents being romantic, especially his dad.

“Sometimes friends watch movies together, too,” Mike told her. “It doesn’t have to be a date.”

“But you like her and she likes you,” Holly argued back. “So it’s romantic!”

That time he was the one who rolled his eyes, messing with one of her buns.

“Okay, Queen of Romance,” he teased her. “We can talk about my love life later. Let’s get more candy!”

He grabbed her hand again and they continued their walk to visit other houses, Holly mentioning El every now and then.

“What’s El’s favorite candy?”

“I think she said one time it was Snickers.”

“Do you think El and Max are giving out candy?”

“Maybe but they’re not in this neighborhood.”

“I think El would make a really pretty Princess Leia.”

“Me too.”

By the time they had turned in the other direction to go back home, Holly was exhausted and was dragging her feet along the pavement more than actually taking steps. Mike had leaned down to pick her up, letting her wrap his arms around his neck and rest her head on his shoulder, and carried her the rest of the way. When they had gotten to their house, she was fast asleep and he’d carried to her room.

Karen told him to go downstairs and watch out for the trick or treaters who were still coming by while she went upstairs to get Holly ready for bed. He sat down on the kitchen table, the bowl of candy for trick or treaters in front of him as he sneaked some out and ate the fun sized chocolate bars, hiding the wrappers in the pockets of his hoodie.

Only one person came by the house while his mom was upstairs, a little girl dressed up as Princess Leia holding on to the hand of her dad as she shyly asked for candy. Mike couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her, and give her extra candy for the excellent costume choice, and he also couldn’t help but think about El. But really, he just couldn’t help but think about El, period.

Her. And him. And  _Star Wars_. A dream that seemed infinitely impossible would become reality in a few hours. (Fifteen to be exact, but who’s counting?)

He looked down at the bowl of candy after closing the door, remembering that Snickers were El’s favorite, and went to the table to pick out all the fun-sized chocolate bars with the label. He even picked them out of Holly’s basket, deciding that he could give them to El tomorrow so she could eat them during their movie marathon. He put them all in one of the brown bags his mother used for his lunches and the second that she came back downstairs, he rushed to the basement.

Mike looked around at the room, dusty and disorganized and filled with all of his nerdy toys and posters. He decided that if he was going to do this romance thing right (and he was going to do it right because one, El deserved it but also fuck her, he wanted to prove her wrong) he had to make the basement more of a date place and less of a cave that him and the guys used to escape society.

He started by cleaning everything up, organizing and hiding away all embarrassing traces of his nerd-iness. Then he dusted away all the furniture and vacuumed, his mother even coming down at the noise and being surprised at the sight of him cleaning up.

“All of this is for a girl,” she asked, her voice filled with disbelief. “You must really like her.”

“Mom! Go!”

Once he was done cleaning and tidied up, everything despite the disgusting smell that seemed to linger in the air from years and years of Dustin’s unembarrassed farts and he was trying to get rid of it by burning candles. But it wasn’t enough. He had to do more for El, especially since it was their first date and he didn’t want the image of his ordinary basement to be stuck in her memories forever. 

Then the idea came to him.

He went to grab the chairs that were usually around the D&D table and moved them towards the couch that was against one of the walls. He separated them and then grabbed the quilts and sheets he had put away, draping the sheets over the chairs to create a canopy over the carpet. He set the blankets inside to cushion the floor and then put in the throw pillows until it finally looked like a cozy enough fort for them. It didn’t look very nice though, and so he went to the closet where his mom kept the Christmas decoration and he intertwined the multicolored lights on the chairs and over the sheets until it looked nice. Romantic.

Mike smiled at the sight of, what he would call, impressive architecture and then dragged the TV set from its place until it was placed right in the middle of the opening of the fort. He made sure his  _Star Wars_  tapes had been rewinded to the beginning, and decided then that everything was ready for his date with El.

He turned off the candles, telling himself he’d turn them on before El got there in the afternoon, and turned off the Christmas lights, giving the room one last look before he headed upstairs to his bedroom where he forced himself to fall asleep so that November 1st could come by faster.

A day that woke him up with bright sunshine peering through the window and the smell of his mother cooking and he knew that it was going to be a good day.

Finally, the universe was on his side.

After he went downstairs to eat breakfast with his family, his mother in a good mood to finally meet El and Holly ecstatic to see her again, he went back up to start getting ready for his date.

The problem was that he had no idea what to wear. Mike knew that he was just going to be in his basement all day, but it was technically still a date. He didn’t want to look like he was trying to hard, but he still wanted to look nice.  _(Was this how girls felt all the time?)_

He stood in front of his closet, scooting hanger after hanger of t-shirts and hoodies trying to figure out what to wear. It was one of the few times he was kind of regretting not taking Nancy up on her offer to go shopping with her so he could, as she had so kindly put it, “start to dress like a cool teenager and not an actual dweeb.” Then his eyes fell on his yellow knitted sweater, the one that he had originally been planning to wear to the party and that El still hadn’t seen yet and his thought as he was pulling it off its hanger was “Nancy can totally suck it.” El was going to love it.

Mike grabbed his dark blue pair of jeans and moved to grab a clean white T-shirt and pair of boxers and socks before he went to the bathroom to shower. He wanted to make sure he was nice and clean. From what Max had told him once, girls went crazy over how guys smelled coming fresh out of a shower. She and Lucas had then proceeded to give each other nauseating looks composed of sly smiles and raised eyebrows and he had tried not to vomit, but still. It had been sound advice about the shower smell thing.

And he had to say, even though it was totally embarrassing, Mike thought that he did smell pretty good once he was out of the shower and into his self-approved, basement movie date outfit. He’d brushed his teeth and put some random hair products that Nancy had left behind, finding that it made his curls more noticeable than usual. 

He thought he had it all figured out and ready until he realized: shoes. Was he supposed to wear shoes? El was was going to be wearing shoes when she showed up, obviously, but that did mean he had to wear some, too? Would it be weird if he did though since he had been home all day? Or would it look weird if he wasn’t wearing any?

He went back and forth, looking from his tube socks clad feet to his scuffed sneakers on the floor. What if he only put on one shoe? 

_Mike, shut up_ , he told himself.

With a wince, he leaned down to slip them on, hoping that he didn’t look like an idiot. He needed for once to be the least of an idiot he could be in front of El. Even though he knew she’d probably think he was one regardless. 

He gave himself a final look in his mirror before going downstairs to the basement. El would probably be there any second and he had to make sure everything was perfect. He lit the candles that were sitting on the coffee table and turned the Christmas lights on. He’d make sure to turn off the actual lights once they started the movies so that it wouldn’t be so dark when El showed up. Mike didn’t want her to think he was a creep.

Just as he was walking up the stairs, the doorbell rang and his heart stopped. He didn’t have any more time to worry about getting things ready. El was there.

Mike felt his heart start again only to pick up its speed as he walked quickly to the front door. He unlocked it, his hand at the doorknob, as he slowly turned it to open it and reveal-.

“El,” he breathed, not able to hide his smile at the sight of her.

“Mike,” she smiled back shyly.

She was wearing a cropped shirt, the black, white, orange, and red striped material stopping an inch above her denim skirt to reveal the tiniest patch of skin. The denim jacket she was wearing had a white fur collar and was the same shade of blue as her skirt, her black tights she had on underneath it giving way to her beat-up white Converse. And her hair, pulled back into two symmetrical French braids, a few betraying curls in the front framing her soft face.

She looked-.

“Pretty,” Mike found himself saying. She blushed and he followed, coughing to try and cover up his mindless but honest comment. “I mean…you look pretty.”

“Thank you,” she giggled, tucking one of the curls behind her ear and stepping closer to him. “You look really pretty, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I love this sweater,” she said, reaching out to grab the end of the sleeve, her fingertips tickling the back of his hand.

She loved his sweater.

_Nancy Can Totally Suck It- Part Two._

“Thanks.” Mike blushed and then he remembered that he was still outside with her and he blushed harder, moving aside from the door. “You can come inside.”

She smiled and moved past him inside, Mike closing the door only to see that his mom was leaning against the entryway of the kitchen, trying and failing to look casual with a dish rag in her hand.

“Michael, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend,” Karen asked, giggling at the word friend. 

He wanted to die.

“Mom, this is El,” he said, gesturing towards her. “El, this is my mom.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Wheeler,” El smiled, moving towards her and extending her hand. Karen ignored it however and went to wrap her arms around her into a hug.

“Oh please,” she laughed. “Call me Karen.”

“Okay,” Mike said, trying to get out of the room before his mom could act any weirder. He walked up to El, putting his at the small of her back to try and guide her away. “We’re gonna go downstairs to watch some movies.”

But he only got a couple steps away before he heard the small pattering of footsteps running down the stairs and soon enough Holly appeared.

“El, you’re here,” she squealed, practically jumping down the last few steps and running towards the teenage girl.

“Holly,” El laughed, crouching down just in time to receive Holly with open arms and into a hug. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too! I have so much to tell you,” Holly said, before looking at Mike and her mom and lowering her voice. “About the boy in my class.”

“Oh,” El asked, her eyebrows raised in seriousness. 

“Boy in your class,” Mike asked with confusion and slight protectiveness. She was only in second grade! She was already having boy drama?!

“Don’t worry about it, Mikey,” Holly waved him off. “It’s girl stuff.”

“Yeah, Mikey,” El jumped in quickly. “It’s girl stuff.”

Mike rolled his eyes at El, not able to hide his smile though when she winked at him. 

“Let’s go to my room to talk about it,” Holly told El, taking her by the hand, but Karen quickly jumped in.

“Holly, El came to spend time with Mike,” she told her and Mike was suddenly really grateful that she was standing there.

“But I wanna talk to El,” she whined. Then she looked back at Mike. “Can I go downstairs and watch movies with you guys?”

“Hey, Holly,” El said, tugging on her hand and bringing her attention back to her. “How about I take you out for ice cream on Friday? Just you and me and we can talk all you want.” She looked back to Karen with a shy smile. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Of course,” Karen smiled.

“Okay,” Holly agreed excitedly and Mike found himself excited, too. His sister and his girl (friend? girlfriend?) hanging out was literally the cutest thing ever. He knew that if Nancy ever got to meet El, which he so hoped she would, that she’d like her, too.

“I guess we can go and watch the movies now,” Mike said and El nodded at him. 

“I’ll see you before I go,” El told Holly and the blonde smiled and headed towards the kitchen. El looked back at Karen. “Thank you for having me.”

“Of course, sweetie! Let me know if you need anything.”

El started to walk away towards the general direction Mike had been trying to get her to before. Karen used the opportunity to mouth the words “I like her” to Mike. He mouthed “me too.”

Mike quickly moved to walk near El, leading her down the steps of the basement and looking back at her to see the look on her face as she saw the fort he had made. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly ajar, and he felt strangely proud of himself. She walked towards the fort, peeking inside the comfy fortress Mike had made for them, and then turned back to him with a wide smile.

“You did all this for me,” she asked. 

“I told you I could be romantic.”

“Oh my god you’re still with that?!” 

She rolled her eyes but she was laughing, walking back to him and wrapping her arms around his torso. 

“Hell yeah,” he said, a sly smiled on his face. He wrapped his own arm around her back, pulling her even closer to him. “And if I’m not mistaken, you said you were going to make out with me for being romantic so…”

“I did say that,” she said softly. 

He was leaning down, El reaching up to meet him halfways on her tiptoes, their lips grazing over each other, when Karen’s voice came calling down the stairs.

“I made you two some popcorn,” she shouted sweetly, making the two jump apart. 

Mike groaned, smacking himself in the face at the interruption. 

“Karen is just being nice,” El told him seriously, breaking into laughter when he looked at her with exasperation.

He trudged up the stairs, his mother at the landing with a giant bowl of popcorn in her hand and a promise not to bother them anymore, and he went back down to find that El was setting aside her shoes to the side of the fort. She turned back to grin at him and he smiled back, taking off his own shoes before he joined her in the fort.

“So you like it for real,” he asked her, setting the popcorn bowl between the two of them and leaning back to look at her.

“I just need to be with you and I’ll like it,” she shrugged.

“Awww,” he teased, reaching out to pinch her cheek that she quickly leaned out of. “Who knew you were so romantic, Hopper?”

“Shut it, Wheeler,” she said, even though her face was now tinted pink. She was so cute. “And hurry up and put on your damn space movies before I change my mind.”

She took off her denim jacket, leaning back on one of the pillows. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Her and her pouty lip glossed lips and flushed cheeks and little curls sneaking out of her braids. She was so effortlessly beautiful and Mike always wanted to see her like this. Exactly like that. 

And that was when he remembered.

“Hold on,” he said quickly, getting out of the fort. He hurried up the stairs, ignoring El’s confused protests, and came back with his mom’s polaroid camera.

“What’s that for,” El asked him, looking at the camera in his hands and then back at him.

He put the camera up to his eye, pointing it towards her.

“I want to take a picture of you,” he said quickly.

“What?! No,” she exclaimed quickly, covering her face in her hands.

“Come on,” he whined, putting the camera down to move her hands away. She was stubborn, keeping them there firmly, until he started tickling her stomach, her hands flying away to try and stop him. The fort echoed with the sound of her laughter and he didn’t think he had ever heard something so angelic. “I want a picture of you!”

“Why,” she asked, still laughing and trying to escape Mike and finally grabbing his wrists in her hands. Their eyes locked on each other, Mike hardly hovering over her.

“Because you’re beautiful and I want to see you even when you’re not actually with me,” he told her earnestly, smirking a bit when he visibly saw her defense come down.

“Fine,” she bit on her lip. 

She sat up and he moved away from her. He positioned the camera correctly and she sat with her legs to one side, one hand falling across her lap and the other holding her up at her side. She smiled at him softly and he felt himself getting nervous and shaky at just how pretty she was. He quickly captured the picture, grabbing it as it came out and putting it face down.

“Thank you,” he smiled, putting the camera down and leaning towards her for a kiss, but she stopped him.

“Now I want one of us,” she smiled cheekily and he groaned.

“Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful and I-.”

“Shut up,” he laughed, shoving her shoulder slightly and she laughed with him. 

El leaned forward to grab the camera and then sat next to him.

“It’ll be quick and painless,” she said, having the camera face them as she extended her arm out so she would be able to capture the picture. “Just smile.”

He looked at her and found that smiling around El was actually the easiest thing in the world. He put an arm around her shoulder then, El grinning wider at the action, and he faced the camera again. He smiled softly at the camera.

“Okay,” El said. “In three, two, one-.”

And then she turned quickly to plant a kiss on his cheek right as she hit the shutter button and his smile turned into a full grin. He blushed and she laughed, taking the picture and facing it down just like he’d done.

“Gotcha,” she giggled, and he couldn’t even be mad. He just retaliated by kissing her cheek and then took the camera from her to put it to the side and outside the tent.

“That better be a good picture,” he said.

“It’s going to be the perfect picture!”

Mike picked up the photograph he had taken of El, deciding it had probably developed already, and turned it over to find the prettiest girl in the world smiling at him in film. Forever.

“This is the perfect picture,” he told El, holding it out for her to see.

“It is a good picture,” she smiled in approval. 

He went out of the fort to put it in his backpack that was sitting at the D&D table. He went to the TV then, turning it on and then taking _A New Hope_ out of its case and sliding it into the VHS player. He was going to go and turn off the lights so they could see the screen better, when she stopped him.

“Wait,” she said, holding up the polaroid she’d taken. “Look how cute it is!”

He took it from her and felt butterflies as he looked down at the picture. It had happened minutes ago, but looking at it, him with his arm around El and her lips on his cheek and his wide smile, it all seemed surreal. He hadn’t lied when he had written that poem. Being with El constantly felt like a dream.

“It is really cute,” he told her, handing it back to her and she slipped it inside the pocket of her jacket.

He turned off the lights, the only light coming from the candles and the TV screen and the Christmas lights, and hurried to join El back inside the fort. She had her back pressed against the couch, a pillow hugged to her chest, and he sat down beside her, taking the bowl of popcorn into his lap.

“Are you ready,” he asked her and she turned to him giving him an encouraging nod.

“Okay,” he breathed, picking up the remote control, pointing it towards the TV and pressing play.

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…._

* * *

El wasn’t sure exactly yet if she liked Star Wars, but she was absolutely certain she liked Mike’s hand in hers. Even more certain that she liked the whole of him.

She liked that he smelled like cinnamon and laundry detergent. She liked the way he took the time to write a poem and make his basement look romantic for their first official date. She liked the press of his fingers against her ribcage and his lips against her cheek. She liked that way his face looked brightened by the light of the TV, his mouth slightly parted as he mouthed lines from the movie, his eyes wide. She was almost positive she’d spent most of the movie watching the scenes through the reflection in his eyes than from the actual screen. But she couldn’t stop.

Looking at Mike, El was realizing, was her favorite thing to do. She wanted to memorize the precise locations of his freckles. The exact angle of his jawline. The length of his naturally curled eyebrows. Everything. Starting with the left side of his profile wasn’t a bad start. It also wasn’t a terrible view.

She was still staring at him, focusing on the slope and shape of his eyebrow, when Mike’s voice brought her out of her study and back into reality.

“Are you gonna stare at me the entire movie,” he asked her. He turned to look at her with a shit-eating grin, his eyebrow raised and El realized she was going to have to recalculate due to its new form.

“I wasn’t staring,” she tried to say as casually as possible, although the tint on her cheeks betrayed her. She’d been totally caught staring at Mike and she realized then maybe it was a little creepy and a lot embarrassing.

“Oh no,” he asked, meeting her casual tone, a hint of teasing to it.

“Nope.”

She turned back to look at the screen, not at all enjoying the way Mike was ready to tease her about being caught staring at him for more than an hour. He squeezed her hand once though and pulled her closer to him, laying a kiss on the top of her head that filled her with a sort of sweetness she’d never felt before, innocent and comforting and  _there_. 

She looked up at him, a smile tugging the end of her mouth upwards and he moved his hand away from in between them to wrap around her shoulder. He pulled her into his side and she let him, her head coming to rest on his chest, her arms wrapping around his torso, and his thumb rubbing soothing circles on her upper arm where his hand rested. 

So El was absolutely certain she liked Mike’s hand in hers but she was even more certain she liked the feel of her and Mike melding together to hold each other. 

“Are you liking the movie so far,” Mike asked her softly after a while, his eyes still on the screen and she nodded against his chest.

“Yeah,” El answered. “Leia is such a badass.”

“Holly was saying yesterday that you’d make a really pretty Leia.”

El considered that statement. Maybe she could see it a little, the big brown eyes and the fair skin and tiny sloped nose.

“I guess I can see it,” she said, and then trying to tease Mike added, “It’s too bad though.”

“Why?

“You’re not cute enough to be Han Solo,” she shrugged.

“Hey,” he exclaimed, his hand around her waist immediately pinching her side and making her giggle and squirm. He laughed and then asked her, “And wait, how do you know about Leia and Han?”

“It’s obvious,” she rolled her eyes. He looked down at her expectantly and she dropped her voice down low to imitate Han. “‘Wonderful girl. Either I’m going to kill her or I’m beginning to like her.’”

Mike threw his head back, laughing at El’s impression and El felt her heart begin to glow at the sound of it. She liked it more than anything when she was able to make Mike laugh

“Okay,” he said, through his laughter. “I guess it is obvious.”

She nodded once, accepting her small victory with a smile, and turned back to the TV screen.

She said softly, casually, as she watched the movie, “And I was kidding about the Han Solo thing. You’re cuter.”

And even though she didn’t turn to look at his reaction, she felt him pull her closer and sensed the heat rise in him, wondering if he felt her too.

El spent the rest of the movie watching in silence, concentrated on the action and actually feeling concern for the characters. She watched as Luke, and Han in a return that made her feel giddy, fought off Vader and destroyed the Death Star and she had to admit it gave her feelings of excitement. Not to mention the looks Leia and Han gave each other, flirty and secretive and oh so familiar, that made her heart race fast. 

The movie finished and El found herself disappointed.

“Wait was that it,” she asked, looking up at Mike. 

“Yeah,” he laughed, looking down at her and brushing a stray curl away from her faced. “But don’t worry, Princess. There’s still two more movies.”

“Don’t call me ‘Princess,’” she groaned, shoving away at him and fighting a smile.

He let her, stretching out his legs and arms before crawling out of the fort. She followed him, standing up and stretching as he went to the TV and rewinded the tape to the very beginning. While that happened, she walked around the room, taking in the sci-fi movie posters on the wall and all the other nerdy stuff he had lying around: a D&D binder, stacks of comic books, a toy replica of the Millennium Falcon. (She was proud of herself for knowing what it was called now.)

Her eyes landed on a small toy dinosaur on the end table where the lamp was, and she picked it up with curiosity. She couldn’t believe her boyfriend  _(Boyfriend? Boy friend? Friend?)_  still had toys. 

“Who’s this,” El asked Mike, holding up the dinosaur in question.

Mike turned to look at El from where he was standing by the television, his hands putting the VHS tape back into its paper case. He smiled excitedly when he saw the dinosaur in El’s hands and she felt her heart tug at the sight of it.

“Oh that’s Rory,” he smiled childishly, setting the tape down on the TV and walking over to El. He took it from her and put his thumb over the dinosaur’s head. “Because it roars! See?”

Mike pressed down on it and the toy let out a pathetic little roar through its speakers and El couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“That’s such a lame pun,” she told him.

“No it isn’t,” he said defensively, a pouty look on his face that made El find him even cuter than usual. Though she refused to let him know that, the annoyed look on her face firm. “And besides, I came up with it when I was like five.”

“Oh yeah,” El said, a quirked eyebrow as she took Rory from him without breaking eye contact. “And what’s your excuse for the terrible ‘boo-tiful’ pun you made yesterday?”

“You have a problem with my puns, Hopper,” Mike asked her challenging, stepping closer to her and basically towering over her. 

El felt something rise in her, Mike’s dark eyes looking into her own, him so close to her.

“Lots, actually,” she answered. The biggest problem, she thought, was that his lips weren’t on hers and that his hands weren’t anywhere on her body and that they were still talking instead of making out.

“Well that’s too bad considering.”

“Considering what,” El spoke, stepping a closer to him, growing anxious from waiting.

“That I got you a shit ton of Snickers.”

El let the sentence hang in the air for a little, linger as she tried to process it.

“Wait what,” she finally asked, confused and letting the tension she’d felt earlier disappear. 

Mike walked away from her and over to the coffee table to grab a brown paper bag that was sitting on it before going back to her. She took the bag from him, opening it to find that there was in fact a shit ton of fun sized Snickers bars inside.

“Wha-.”

“I remembered you said they were your favorite so I saved them all for you,” he smiled, his hand going up to rub at the back of his neck in slight embarrassment.

El’s mouth opened slightly, looking from his face and back to the candy. She’d mentioned maybe once that her favorite candy was Snickers, a long time ago during a heated debate at lunch spurred by Dustin’s claim that 3 Musketeers was one of the best candies. Even then, it had been a while since that brief comment, back when Mike hated her and didn’t care about her. Although she was starting to believe that there really never was a time when Mike didn’t care about her.

Her heart flutter at the sweet (pun intended on her part) revelation of Mike’s feelings towards her, his cute gesture a sign that he had thought about her yesterday even after their phone call. She was about to tell him that, that he was the cutest, when his hands snatched the bag away from her hands.

“But you insulted my puns so you can’t have them anymore,” Mike said, a twinkle in his eyes.

“Mike,” she pouted, reaching towards the bag but missing it when he stretched his arm above her head. “Don’t be mean!”

“You were mean first! You called my puns lame!”

“That was before I knew chocolate was involved!”

El jumped up, trying to reach the bag but failing spectacularly to even get close to it. Mike looked down at her with a smug look on his face, obviously enjoying the way she was she making a fool of herself, and she was starting to get a little annoyed when she remembered.

“Fine,” she said, a smile on her face as she stopped jumping. “If you don’t give me the bag, then I won’t kiss you.”

And before she even blinked, could see him react, he brought his arm down and tossed the bag to her, El’s quick reflexes easily catching it in her hands. She looked up at him, a quirked eyebrow at how fast he had reacted to her threatening not to kiss him, and was met with an expectant glance.

“I didn’t say I was going to kiss you now,” she giggled.

“Oh come on,” he whined throwing his head back and she laughed at his antics.

“You’re the one who wanted to watch  _Star Wars_ ,” she said casually, patting his back as she walked past him and went to go sit back down in the fort. “Now put on the next movie. I want to see what happens with Leia and Han.”

Mike groaned, making El giggle as she went to unwrap one of the candy bars and take a bite out of it. He put in the VHS tape for the second movie into the player and then went to join her in the fort as they waited for the film to start. He tried to grab one of the bars from her bag, but she quickly smacked it away.

“I can’t have any chocolate either,” he asked in disbelief.

“Nope,” she smiled, going to take another one out of the bag and then setting it aside. But after taking a bite out of it, she offered the rest to him, propping him to open his mouth so she could feed it to him.

He smiled at her afterwards, a smile that made El feel a sort of bliss she’d never really felt before. Like content was just a normal part of her everyday life even though she knew it was anything but. She didn’t want to dwell on it though. She never wanted to bring anything from her imperfect life into her time with Mike.

She settled back into his side like she had before, sides connected and arms around each other.

El watched with a fascination as the movie began. Luke was captured by some weird creature but before she could even dwell on it, Han appeared on the screen and immediately started making major eye contact with Leia. She wondered if Mike could tell she was mostly excited for the movie because of the romance, if he would mind or roll his eyes, but she found she didn’t really care if he did. Romance was wonderful.

As the movie continued though, El found herself invested in all of it. She watched as Luke trained with Yoda and was revisited by Obi-Wan. She secretly swooned at the introduction to Lando Calrissian, who oozed cool, until she discovered he had betrayed Han. She even secretly shed a tear at the confession of love from Leia before Han was frozen.

The biggest reaction she had to the movie though was the shocking revelation that Darth Vader was Luke’s father.

“What,” El exclaimed at the words. “He’s joking! Tell me he’s just messing with him!”

Mike looked down at her, a held back smile on his face.

“I can’t,” he said with a shake of his head.

El turned her attention back to the TV, seeing as Luke yelled in anguish as he realized Vader was telling the truth and in turn threw her head into Mike’s chest.

“I can’t believe this,” she wailed, still beyond shocked.

“No one could,” Mike told her, squeezing her tighter and kissing the top of her head. “It’ll be okay, though.”

El continued to watch as Luke held on and waited for Leia’s rescue, and then in anticipation to see if they would be able to escape Vader.  It wasn’t until they finally did, and Luke was given a cool robotic hand, that El felt like she could breathe again. She watched as Luke, Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO gazed out onto space, a hopeful feeling overtaking her, and then before she got to settle into it the credits started.

“Wait, that’s it,” she squinted at the screen.

“Did you want more,” Mike asked her, looking down at her and laughing at her outrage.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, moving away from him to express herself properly. “Vader is still out there! And we need to see Obi-Wan again! And I don’t know if Han is alive! They just ended it when it was getting good!”

“So you liked it,” Mike asked her, a wide smile on his face.

“Yeah,” El said with an obvious tone in her voice. “That was definitely better than the first one!”

“Totally agreed! This one had Yoda, Lando, and the biggest reveal in movie history.”

“And the romance,” El poked, a smirk on her face.

“And romance,” Mike blushed.

“Okay,” El smiled, patting Mike on the back as a sign that he should get up. “I’m ready. Let’s watch the next one.”

He looked a little taken aback at how quickly she resettled herself against the pillows, her hands crossed in her lap and her eyes expectant.

“Ready are you? What know you of ready,” Mike told her, his voice trying to mimic Yoda’s. 

“Mike,” El scolded, crinkling her nose and shoving his shoulder.

“You did an impression of Han earlier,” he argued back.

“Yeah but mine was good.”

“Wow,” he said in mock offense. “So no kisses, no puns, and no impressions?”

El looked as if she was considering it for a moment before she finally settled for an agreement.

“You can have one.”

“Kiss,” he asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Pun,” she rolled her eyes.

“Five.”

“Three.”

“Deal,” El agreed, extending her hand out for Mike to shake.

“Let me just think of them,” he told her, laying down on his back and looking up at the blanket roof of the fort.

El huffed, still wanting to watch the next movie, but leaned back on her own pile of pillows. She turned on her right side, her face in the palm of her hand as her elbow propped her up so she could look at Mike. He looked concentrated, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth twitching from side to side as he contemplated different puns. El smiled a bit to herself, thinking about how cute he looked as he thought about his dumb puns so seriously.

He turned to her a little while afterwards, a goofy grin on his face and his eyes filled with excitement.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got them.”

“Alright,” she smiled back at him, staying in her same position.

He moved and crawled closer to her, mirroring her position as he laid down on his left side and propped himself up on his elbow. He brought a hand up to her face, his fingers causing chills to ripple throughout all of her. His eyes were locked on hers, making her hold in a breath.

“Yoda one that I want,” he said seriously, and it was enough for her to let out her breath in the form of a gag.

“That’s terrible,” she said, moving her hand up to the one he still had on her cheek. “That’s what you came up with?!”

“I still have two more,” he laughed.

“Fine. Give it to me,” she said with determination.

He coughed in preparation and told her, “I’d be lost without chew.”

“Never mind, take it back.”

“You’re mean, Hopper,” he told her, a pout on his face as he shoved her, El falling back easily due to all the laughter coming out of her.

“You just have terrible puns, Wheeler,” she said in between bursts of laughter. Her face was feeling all too warm from the laughing and from Mike’s extremely attractive brooding face practically hovering over her. She reached her arm out and put her hand on the back of Mike’s neck, pulling him down closer to her. “Tell me your last one.”

He looked at her, his eyes moving on hers back and forth, his grin disappearing into something softer, more earnest. He put his hand back up to cradle the side of her face, both of them quiet, and El wondered if the faint sound of a quick heartbeat was hers or Mike’s.

All too quietly then he said, “You’re the obi-wan for me.”

And that time El didn’t laugh or gag or groan. Her pulse quickened and her lips parted into a small smile and she held onto him even tighter.

“Good,” she whispered.

He breathed out, leaning down closer to her, his face only a few centimeters away from her until he stopped.

“What,” El asked him.

“It’s just that every time I kiss you we always seem to be interrupted,” Mike let out a low chuckle.

“Just kiss me,” she said. She pulled him down to her, her lips grazing over his jaw. “We won’t be interrupted this time.” She placed a kiss right below it. “We’ll kiss however long you want.”

“What if I want to kiss you forever,” he asked, his voice low and his eyes closed, almost as if he was too afraid to look at her and ask.

El wasn’t afraid to answer, though.

“Then kiss me forever.”

Mike opened his eyes and looked at her, their eyes on each other before he closed them and swooped in, El’s eyes closing as Mike’s lips crashed onto hers. She let out a groan, throwing both of her arms around him to pull him closer to her. He rearranged himself so he was practically over her, their bodies pressed together from shoulders to hips.

His lips moved frantically over hers and she tried to keep up the pace, her senses going on overload at the feel of him on her, his lips meeting hers again and again. She felt like she was going crazy, the sound of Mike’s quiet groans and the taste of chocolate on his mouth. Her heart was threatening to abandon her chest, all of her blood boiling and it suddenly got all too warm for her long sleeve shirt and the feel of Mike’s sweater against her.

Mike opened El’s mouth with his own, their tongues meeting and doing a dance of their own just as Mike and El’s hands currently were. Hers moved up and down his back, trying and failing to grip and hold onto all of him. She wanted to touch as much of him as possible and it was frustrating that she just couldn’t have it all. Mike’s hand meanwhile had moved up and down her waist, her arms, going up to her head where she felt him have frustrations of his own at not being able to hold onto any of her hair.

It only took one more exasperated grunt until he pulled on the two elastic bands on either side of her and ran his fingers through the braids to get rid of them and set her curls free.

“My braids,” El gasped, taking her lips away from Mike and throwing her head back at the amazing feel of Mike’s fingers running through her scalp and tugging gently on her hair.

“I’ll redo them later,” he breathed. 

Mike put his hands back on her hips and in a swift motion flipped them over so he was under her. El opened her eyes and saw Mike under her, an infatuated grin on his face before his hands returned to her hair and El’s lips went back on Mike’s. She moved to start kissing the line of his jaw and Mike’s drew a sharp gasp, his grip on her tightening.   

“I love your hair,” he said.

“What else do you love about me,” she asked him teasingly, her lips starting to leave scattered kisses up and down his neck.

“Your laugh,” he answered, his hands moving out of her hair and down to her back. She looked up at him, and caught her lips with his for a moment. And then gently he moved his mouth up and pressed a gentle kiss to each of he closed eyelids, soft skin under his lips. “Your eyes.” 

She opened them and saw him, his face smiling and pink and so beautiful she wanted to burst into tears.

“Your nose,” he continued, kissing it sweetly and she crinkled it in response, going back to kissing him. 

One of her hands went up to his hair, her fingers interlocking in his slightly curly locks and the other went down to his stomach, her fingertips toying with the hem of his sweater. She wanted so badly to reach underneath it, splay her hands across his warm skin and have it underneath hers. As she inched her hands closer up, she felt Mike tremble and she withdrew her lips and hands to look at him. His eyes were wide, filled with something she’d seen before, and he let out a short laugh before he pulled her to him again.

“Your hands,” he said against her mouth. He reached down and held onto her wrist, pulling up to its position where her fingers were barely grazing his stomach. And she knew then that the tremble had probably been a good thing, she had permission to touch him there, and her hand went up until his bare waist was being clutched by El’s. El felt like she was on fire, like she had the very thing itself in her palms, all hers, and Mike moaned in response. “God I love your hands.”

She smiled against him, moving her other hand away from his hair to join the first under Mike’s sweater, El moving them so they were splayed across Mike’s back, pulling him even closer to her. Mike’s arm went around El’s shoulder to hold her against him and his other hand went up to her head, his fingers going into her hair.

“I love the way you write,” he told her, his lips trying to reach for her neck and she threw her head back to help him get access to it, getting lost in the way his lips felt on her. “And think.”

“You always go against my opinions,” she laughed, looking back down at him. She kissed him and let out a moan at the feel of Mike’s hand’s squeezing and pulling her flush against him.

“Because they’re better than mine,” he mumbled.

She took her lips away from him, looking down at him with a smug look on her face, cheeks flushed and a smirk.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out honestly, his hands cradling her face, keeping her eyes on his. “You’re perfect, El.”

_Perfect._

El knew damn well that Mike was far from it. He was stubborn and close minded and had terrible opinions. He was a dorky dancer and wasn’t athletic in the slightest. He couldn’t sing and even had trouble speaking, always rambling and going off on tangents. His impressions were terrible and his jokes were corny. He had anger issues and knew how to hold onto grudges. 

Mike Wheeler was not perfect. But she still wanted him so badly.

She wanted his stubbornness and terrible opinions so she could argue against him. And she wanted his dorky dancing and singing so she could have something to laugh at the rest of her life. She wanted his impressions and jokes and everything else that came with him.

El Hopper wanted him. All of him. Forever.

How could El ever want perfect when Mike wasn’t? 

Maybe the thought should have been scary, terrifying even, because she always heard that it was when you first realized you were in love with someone. But right there, looking into Mike’s eyes, having him pressed under her, their hearts beating at the same rhythm and their breathing mingling, she knew. She was in love with him.

She was in love with Mike Wheeler and it didn’t feel scary because she knew it was supposed to happen. El was in love with him because that’s just the way the world worked. She’d loved him when she met him. She’d loved him when she hated him. She loved him now even when she was thinking of reasons why she maybe shouldn’t.

She loved him. So much.

That feeling of love was what she was consumed with before she leaned back in and kissed him, softer this time, and Mike met her with the new intimacy. No questions asked.

They stayed there, hands roaming each other in soft touches, lips greeting each other in slow and gentle kisses, stopping only to leave kisses on their cheeks or noses or foreheads. It was anything but rushed, just calm and lazy kisses and caresses that made El feel safe and loved. She wondered if it made Mike feel the same. She hoped it did.

El had ended up laying on top and to the side of Mike. Her head was resting on his chest, her ear right above his heartbeat where she heard and felt its rhythm, inconsistent and strong and there. Her hand had found Mike’s, their fingers intertwined and laid on his stomach. He kept peppering kisses at the crown of her head, his other hand playing gently with her curls, and El closed her eyes at the feel of it. She always wanted to remember this. Him.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, them settled in the mess of blankets and pillows, surrounded by Christmas lights and with the only sound surrounding them being the sound of their breathing, the tape still in VHS player having ended long ago to a standstill. It felt like no time really had passed. Like the world had done them a favor and stopped it just for them so they could enjoy the moment for as long as they wanted to. 

Eventually though, Mike’s quiet voice started it again and El opened her eyes and turned her neck to look at him. His disheveled hair and pink swollen lips and bright eyes. 

“Do you still want me to redo your braids,” Mike asked her softly, his hand squeezing hers once.

She nodded, a smile on her face, and he leaned in to place a kiss on her forehead.

“Okay,” he grinned, and then took his hand away from hers, slowly pushing himself up to sit and she followed. 

They looked around the pillows and blankets before they found where the elastic bands had ended up when Mike had taken them off. El sat down with her legs crossed and Mike sat behind her, splitting her hair into two halves and then working on the first braid.

“Where did you learn how to braid hair anyways,” El giggled, loving the way it felt how Mike was sectioning her hair off into smaller parts and braiding them together.

“My older sister, Nancy, taught me when I was younger,” he said. “She had all these magazines with step by step pictures but she couldn’t do it herself so she had me learn.”

“You’re such a good brother,” she smirked and he pulled on her braid lightly.

“I am,” he defended. “And now I do Holly’s hair. And yours apparently.”

“You’ve never done Max’s.”

“The day I touch her hair is probably the day she’d kill me.”

El laughed, imagining her best friend being angry at Mike for playing with her hair. She’d tried herself on multiple sleepover occasions to braid it but Max hated the feeling. El couldn’t understand why. It felt relaxing to her to have someone’s hands in her hair.

When Mike was done he wrapped his arms around her waist, peeking his head out over her shoulder and turning to give El a kiss on the cheek that she melted into with giggles. 

“Are you ready to watch the last movie now,” he asked her.

“Yes,” she answered, turning her head and giving him a quick peck on the lips. “You can get it ready while I go to the bathroom.”

“Okay,” he smiled.

El disentangled herself from him, crawling out of the fort and stretching her arms and legs from having been in the cramped space for so long. Mike followed her and then pointed to where the basement bathroom was before going to the TV to rewind the film before putting it away.

El walked into the bathroom, turning on the light and locking the door behind her. There was a mirror right in front of and she caught sight of her appearance, blushing at how red her lips were but smiling at how nice her braids looked. So far it’d been a great date, and she was surprised at how much she had liked those nerdy space movies so far. She couldn’t help but wonder if all their other dates would be as great as this one. 

After peeing and washing her hands, checking out her appearance one last time in the mirror just to make sure she looked okay, she walked out to find Mike putting in the last movie into the VHS player. He turned and smiled at her and she crawled into the fort, finding her bag filled with Snickers and taking one out to eat.

Mike got into the fort next to her, settling beside her with the remote control in his hand.

“Hey,” he told her, getting her attention. “So about our next date…”

“This one hasn’t even finished yet, Wheeler,” she laughed.

“I know,” he smiled. “But I was just thinking about taking you out to an actual movie on Saturday, like one we both haven’t seen before.”

El considered it for a moment, knowing she had rehearsal on Saturday in the morning but no other plans after that.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Can we go see  _The Princess Bride_? I’ve been wanting to see it but Max says it sounds too girly.”

“Of course,” he laughed. “I’ll even treat you to dinner.”

“Dinner and a movie?! You certainly know your way to a girl’s heart,” she smirked.

“I hope so,” he said, adding a wink at the end for extra measure and it made her blush. She both loved and hated when he did that.

“You know what else would win me over,” El asked, leaning in closer to him. 

“What?”

“If you played the movie.”

She leaned in to kiss him but he ended up laughing, a smile spreading wide across her face. He quickly leaned in to kiss her though, throwing his arm around her.

“Okay,” he said. “I can take a hint.”

El scooted closer to him, pressing a quick kiss to the top of his jaw and turned her attention back to the TV right as Mike pressed play. And despite how distracting Mike had been before, El found herself giving her full attention to the screen. She hadn’t been lying before, about wanting desperately to know what would happen to all the characters, and so she watched everything that unfolded with careful concentration. 

It was weird at first and El wasn’t sure if she was even really liking it. The movie had introduced Jabba the Hutt and his weird friends and El found them all gross and disgusting. It wasn’t until she caught the first glimpse of Lando that she really started to get excited about the movie. And then Leia rescued Han, her heart glowing, and Luke showed up to save his friends and El was 100% on board to see what would happen.

There was Yoda’s death, the revelation that Leia was Luke’s sister, and the cute Ewoks that she literally aww-ed over and Mike playfully rolled his eyes at. It was all compelling, El wanting to know more than anything what would happen to Luke and Vader.

The climax to that question came when Luke gave into his anger and tried to attack the Emperor, starting a duel with Vader. They argued with each other over the light and dark in each of them. Until Vader sensed Luke’s thoughts, discovering that he had a twin sister, and threatened to turn her to the dark side if he wouldn’t.

El gasped at the threat, squeezing on tight to Mike’s arm as she watched as Luke recommenced fighting his father, watching as the red and green lightsabers clashed with each other over and over again until-

_“Mike! Mike, are you there?!”_

El and Mike stopped watching and looked at each other with wide eyes, Mike raising the remote towards the TV and pausing the film. There was frantic knocking on the door of the basement and when the voice spoke again they realized.

_“Dude, are you dead?!”_

“Shit, it’s Dustin,” Mike told El in a panicked whisper. He stayed frozen looking at her while Dustin continued knocking on the door, but she quickly scrambled to get up. “Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving,” she whispered back just as panicked, going to the side of the fort where she’d left her converse and slipped them back on. “Unless you wanna tell him we were on a date.”

“I don’t know! Do you?”

“I don’t know!”

“Mike, just open the door,” Dustin’s voice came again, jiggling the doorknob and making it rattle on their side.

Mike gave one last wary glance towards El before going towards the door. She felt like she couldn’t breathe suddenly.

 It was only Dustin. The worst that could happen would be teasing and telling the rest of the party members about their totally nerdy date. But she couldn’t help it. It was like when the fake rumors had spread about her and Mike. Like something that was hers was being stolen away.

Mike opened the door and Dustin almost fell inside the doorway, having had his hand on the doorknob.

“It took you long enough,” Dustin told Mike. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling you on the supercom all day!”

“I’ve been down here,” Mike said and he looked back at El, bringing Dustin’s attention to her for the first time.

“El,” he asked, eyebrows raised. El noticed he looked at her and then the blanket fort and back at Mike, his expression confused. “What’s going on?”

And maybe she considered it for a moment. Just saying the words “Mike and I are having a date.” Being honest and letting whatever happen. But as she opened her mouth to talk, the words that spilled out of her were lies.

“I came over to see if I had left one of my books here,” El said. She spared a glance to Mike and pretended not to notice his face fall. She pretended not to notice her heart fill up with feeling of guilt. “I need it for that English paper we’re writing and I thought I’d left it over here from when we worked on the project. Apparently it’s not here.”

“So what’s with all these lights and stuff,” Dustin asked Mike. And then he sniffed around the room. “And why does it smell so nice in here?”

“Holly,” he lied, looking at El with a sad glance. “She wanted a fort and stuff to play in and I just kept it up. I’ve been watching movies in it all day.”

El felt bad. It wasn’t even guilt anymore. It was just a feeling of being a terrible person. Mike, who she  _loved_ , shouldn’t have to lie about them, for her, just because she was still feeling weird about everyone knowing about her love life.

“Which movies,” Dustin asked, walking towards the TV.

“Star Wars,” Mike answered, still looking at El.

El hoped Mike could read her as well as she could read him. She hoped here eyes were making it clear to him that she was sorry. So sorry. She hoped he didn’t hate her.

“Nice,” Dustin yelled excitedly, kicking off his shoes and getting into the fort. “You stopped right before Luke cuts Vader’s hand off!”

“What,” El screamed, her eyes wide as she looked at Mike. He had a hand over his mouth from trying to stifle a laugh and despite being angry at being spoiled, she liked that he was at least looking better.

“Have you not seen it,” Dustin grimaced.

“Not all the way through.”

He patted the spot next to him. “Well sit down,” he smiled widely. “You don’t mind right, Mike?”

“Nope,” he smiled softly. “You should totally see Luke cut off Vader’s hand.”

“Okay,” she nodded, taking off her shoes again and crawling to sit down besides Dustin.

Mike followed and sat down next to her, asking Dustin to press play on the remote. El watched the rest of the movie, only taking a few seconds to look at Mike. He noticed and gave her a reassuring smile, sneaking his hand closer to her until his fingers were on top of hers. El felt her heart beat quicken, knowing that it was Mike’s way of telling her that they were okay. They spent the rest of the movie playing with each other’s hands. Not that Dustin would notice considering he spent the entire movie giving his own commentary about everything that was happening.

When it was done, Dustin looked expectantly to El.

“Wasn’t that amazing,” he asked her.

“Totally,” El said, giving Mike’s hand a final squeeze before taking it away. “But I think I should be getting home now. It’s getting late.”

El grabbed her denim jacket that was still in the fort and got up, putting her shoes on and looking back at Mike with an expectant look on her face.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said, motioning towards the stairs leading up to the first floor.

“Thanks,” El smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dustin.”

“Bye, El,” he grinned, and she noticed he had found the bag of Snickers and was reaching his entire fist into it.

_Damn it, she knew she was forgetting something._

She followed Mike up the steps, putting her jacket on as she went up. She could hear the distant sound of snoring and the evening news playing on a TV as she walked with Mike to the front door. Holly and his mom were no where in sight to say goodbye to, but she figured she would just see them on Friday when she took Holly out for ice cream.

“Are you going to need a ride back to your house,” Mike asked her, opening the front door.

“It’s fine. I can walk to the police station from here,” El told him, letting the door close behind them. “Tell your mom I said thanks again for letting me come over. And that I’ll come Friday after school to pick up Holly.”

“Okay,” he chuckled.

He was so pretty, hair blowing in the slight wind and eyes crinkling at their sides. And the feeling that she had done something to hurt him had come back.

“Are you mad at me,” she asked quietly.

“No,” he told her quickly but something about her must have let him know she didn’t believe him. He wrapped one arm around her waist and then his other, bringing her close to him until they were pressed together. And then he leaned down, his face gentle and honest. “I’m not mad. You’re not ready to tell people yet and that’s okay. I’m not in any rush or anything. I’m not…I’m not going  _anywhere_.”

And maybe it was time for El to redact her previous statement about Mike not being perfect because that was the most perfect thing he could have said at the moment.

She smiled widely up at him, putting her hand up to the back of his neck and pulling him down for a kiss. He sighed into it, El shivering at the sound of it and then smiling when he felt her begin to giggle into her mouth.

She was still a little dazed when she looked up at him, in a blur of happiness and love and him. And the way he was looking at her was not helping to take her out of it.

“I,” she started.  _I love you_ , she wanted to say. But she stopped herself. “I like you so much, Mike Wheeler.”

“I know,” he answered.

She laughed at him, going up on her tip toes for one last quick kiss and then pulling away from him.

“I’ll call you tonight,” he told her, his hand on the doorknob but his place firm as he watched her leave down the driveway.

“Okay,” she told him, walking backwards until she reached the street.

El looked back at him, his face grinning, and she couldn’t stop but blow a kiss towards him. She felt silly afterwards, mentally cursing herself for doing something so embarrassing, but then without any hesitation Mike pretended to fumble with it through the air until he finally caught it and tucked it into his front jean pocket.

She threw her head back laughing at the ridiculousness of him, blushing as she continued her walk down the street. It wasn’t until his house was out of sight that she put her hand into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out the polaroid of them. Her finger traced over his face, surprised and happy and pink, and she knew more than anything she wanted to make him happy.

If telling people about them would make him happy then they would tell people.

Soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao hi


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